The Pubs & Breweries of Burren Junction

Houlahan’s Railway Hotel was a notable establishment as early as 1904, with a notice in the Namoi Valley Echo on 13 February 1904 informing residents that a visiting doctor from Wee Waa would be available for consultations there. On 26 March 1904, the same newspaper announced the granting of a licence to J. C. Dempsey for the Burren Junction Hotel. By 1910, Wise’s Post Office Directory listed William Houlahan’s Junction Hotel, though Herbert William Sheehan is believed to have managed it in 1920. This was a single-storey building on the eastern side of Slacksmith Street (previously Railway Street) and Houlahan Street, facing the railway. It later became shared private residences, earning the nickname ‘The Rabbit Warren’ due to the many families living there, before it eventually burned down.

Before 1920, the Houlahans built the two-storey Commercial Hotel on the opposite corner of Slacksmith and Houlahan Streets. Opened by George Smith and his wife (William Houlahan’s daughter), it was initially listed under G. Smith, with Roy Burrell as the licensee by 1920. The Commercial Hotel burned down in 1922, but its cellar remains in a private yard today. At the Coroner’s Inquiry, George Smith humorously remarked that the fire had started at the “usual time – about 3:00am.”

The other hotel was the Coronation Hotel, a large, two-storey weatherboard hotel with broad verandah, owned by Mr Phillip Marr. The hotel owes its name to the coronation of King George V, it was constructed in 1911 and condemned and demolished in the 1980s with the new Junction City Hotel constructed in 1989.

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