James Deasy (1851–1919) was a licensed vintner in Kinsale, Co. Cork. After several years in Boston learning about whiskey (among other occupations), James returned home in 1882 and assumed control of a licensed premises. Deasy’s pub stood at the corner of Pier Road and Fisher Street — subsequently renamed Lower O’Connell Street — on what is now the grassy verge opposite the Trident Hotel. James also served time in Walshe’s, a local pub and bottling business, with other well-known local businessmen: James O’Neill, Sam Murphy, and ‘Mackey’ from Cork. Many descendants of these families still live around the Kinsale area today.

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James Deasy’s business had many facets: bottling their own label whiskey from John Jameson’s, importing and bottling port from Lisbon, John Symons cider from Devonshire, and rum from John Daly’s in Cork. James took particular pride in his bottled Guinness Double Stout and Bass Pale Ale. Coincidentally, his father-in-law, John Stamp, had a licensed premises at the World’s End, Kinsale, having previously served as a ship’s Captain and later as the town’s Harbour Master. When James died in 1919, at around 68 years of age, the business passed to his son Bill, hence the early bottle labels bear the name “James Deasy”, and thereafter “William Deasy”.

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In 1947, disaster struck when the rear wall of the pub collapsed, reducing the building to rubble. Bill’s daughter Olive defied all odds to emerge from the ruins unharmed, surviving the devastation by sheltering under her bed. In later life, Olive became the trusted personal assistant to Sir Tony O’Reilly. The cause of the accident was never discovered but one theory suggests that a house standing between the pub and the Trident Hotel — then a coal store — was removed to build a road for the new pier and this undermined the building’s stability. Whatever the reason, the pub never reopened, heralding the death of an iconic Kinsale enterprise.