ArdglassCo. Down

Chapter 06 · The Smokehouse

Forty years at the same kiln.

A small smokehouse on the County Down coast, family-run since 1986. Cold-smoked salmon, hand-sliced and hand-packed, sent direct.

Patrick McKenna lit the kiln for the first time in March 1986 and has not let it go cold since. The smokehouse sits two hundred yards from the pier at Ardglass on the County Down coast. The building is wooden, tin-roofed, painted dark every five years. The kiln is brick, lined with steel. The fish boxes on the slicing bench are the same fish boxes from 1986, replaced one at a time as they wear out.

The method has not changed. Cure on day one, smoke on day two, rest on day three. Oak shavings, never wood chips. Sea salt, Demerara sugar, no artificial colours, no preservatives, no smoke flavouring, no shortcuts.

We do not supply supermarkets. We have been asked. The answer is no. The fish would have to be hot-smoked or dyed orange or vacuum-packed for a six-week shelf life, and that is not the fish we make. The fish we make is a three-day cold-smoked side of salmon that you eat within fourteen days. If you want it, we will post it to you direct.

Patrick McKenna in the doorway of the smoking kiln, environmental portrait, weathered hands, low light from the kiln behind him
Patrick McKenna · Master Smoker · 03:42

Chapter 07 · The Place

A working harbour. A working coast.

Ardglass landed scallops and crab the morning we wrote this. The wind was Force 5 from the west by lunchtime. The kiln was on hour eight of Day 02.

  1. 1986

    01

    First batch

    Patrick McKenna fires the kiln for the first time. Eight sides hung, fourteen hours of smoke, sold the next day to two restaurants in Newcastle and the local hotel.

  2. 1998

    02

    First mail order

    A chef in London asks for a side posted overnight. We work out how to pack it cold. The first wooden box leaves Ardglass that December and the box has stayed a fixture ever since.

  3. 2026

    03

    Forty years

    Same kiln. Same supplier. Same method. The slicing bench has been replaced once. Patrick is seventy in March; his son Conor has been working alongside him for nineteen years.

Weathered wooden fish boxes stacked on the harbour wall at Ardglass, wet stone, low afternoon light, the sea behind
Plate 09 · Fish boxes on the harbour wall

Chapter 08 · The Method

We do not experiment. The kiln has been telling us how to do this since 1986. We listen.
Patrick McKenna · Master Smoker
Patrick McKenna at the slicing bench, long Sheffield blade in hand, side of salmon laid on the cedar board
Plate 11 · The slicing bench, Day 03

Come see the kiln.

The smokehouse is open Tuesday to Friday between 09:00 and 16:00. We do not run tours, but if you knock during the working week and it is not the middle of a slicing run, we will show you the kiln and the cool room. Phone first if you are coming a long way.

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