The Halfway House Country Pub in Broughshane, Ballymena, has been crowned best in Northern Ireland for its charity and community work at the PubAid Community Pub Hero Awards. 

The Halfway House Country Pub entered its work into the Community Fundraising Hero for Northern Ireland category. 

This Community Fundraising Hero Award recognises pubs who support charities and other good causes through fundraising. 

The pub won after raising over £100,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support. The pub has been run for 29 years by Pat Hamill. In 2015, Pat was diagnosed with cancer. After enduring a series of surgeries and treatments, and receiving exceptional care from Macmillan nurses, Pat made a full recovery. Since his recovery, Pat, alongside his wife, family, staff, and loyal customers, has dedicated himself to raising funds for Macmillan. 

Speaking about his win, Pat praised the local patrons and credited them for the pub’s award saying, “if it wasn’t for our customers, we wouldn’t have won this award”. 

The Halfway House was crowned at a prestigious award ceremony, sponsored by Matthew Clark, at the Houses of Parliament on 4 March. Pat and Cecilia Hamill attended, along with industry leaders and MPs. 

Des O’Flanagan, co-founder of PubAid, added: “The Community Pub Hero Awards highlight all the wonderful and invaluable work publicans do for their local communities and it’s heart-warming that pubs raise so much money for local and national charities. The standard or entry this year has been extremely high as many pubs continue to raise the bar when it comes to supporting their community so the Halfway House should be extremely proud of what they have achieved to be crowned the winner.”
PubAid, which organises the awards in association with Matthew Clark and the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, is the positive voice for UK pubs.