Before Craigavad House was our clubhouse, it was a family home. In the early 1900s it was home to Archibald Kirker, of the Belfast whiskey firm Kirker, Greer & Co. The Club holds photographs of the house from the Kirker years, kindly donated by the Kirker family, among them Mrs Kirker in the early 1900s and the sunken garden. More than a century later, the Kirker name returned to the house on a bottle made especially for the Club.

The house

Craigavad House was built around 1852 for John Mulholland, later the first Lord Dunleath, to designs by the Belfast architect Thomas Turner. It is a restrained classical house on the shore of Belfast Lough, planned around a top-lit central hall with a circular gallery and a glazed dome. Members know that space today as the Rotunda. The Club acquired the house in 1925 and commissioned Harry S. Colt to lay out a new course on the estate. Craigavad became home to Royal Belfast in 1926.

Kirker, Greer & Co.

Kirker, Greer & Co. was formed by two Belfast families, the Kirkers and the Greers, who blended whiskey and traded as wine and spirit merchants. The firm’s property deeds, now held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, place it in the Academy Street area of the city.

In 1886 the firm joined Mitchell & Co. and James Wilson & Son to found the Connswater Distillery in east Belfast. By 1888 it was selling The Shamrock Whiskey, a blend that likely drew on Connswater spirit. Connswater closed in 1929, and in the decades that followed the Kirker, Greer name faded from view, along with much of Belfast’s whiskey trade.

The name returns

The Kirker & Greer name has since been revived in Belfast, and its Shamrock blend is back in production. To mark the connection, the Club and Kirker & Greer produced the Founders Edition: a limited release of Kirker Shamrock blended Irish whiskey, bottled at 40%, with a label altered to carry the Royal Belfast crest. The label notes that Archibald Kirker called Craigavad House his home.

The Royal Belfast Founders Edition is today served in the Herdman Room bar, in the house where Archibald Kirker once lived.

Experience our Hospitality

Book a tee time online and finish your round with a Founders Edition in the Herdman Room. For group reservations, contact the Club Office on +44 28 9042 8165 option 1 to discuss availability.

Craigavad, since 1926.