Attraction in County Galway

Coole Park near Gort in County Galway was the country estate of Lady Augusta Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre and one of the central figures of the Irish Literary Revival, whose house was the gathering place for the greatest writers of early twentieth-century Ireland and whose influence on W B Yeats, John Millington Synge and the other writers she supported and encouraged was one of the most significant cultural patronage relationships in Irish literary history. The house itself was demolished in 1941, but the grounds and woodland of the estate are managed by Coillte and the Office of Public Works as a nature reserve and heritage site. The most celebrated feature of Coole Park is the Autograph Tree, a large copper beech in the walled garden whose bark bears the carved initials of many of the writers and artists who visited Lady Gregory, including W B Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, J M Synge, Douglas Hyde and others. The tree provides the most direct physical connection to the extraordinary circle of creative talent that gathered at Coole in the first decades of the twentieth century and makes an entirely unique piece of literary heritage. Yeats wrote about Coole Park in several poems, most notably in Coole Park, 1929 and Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931, elegies for a place and a time that he knew were passing. The visitor centre provides an excellent introduction to the history of the estate and its cultural significance in the context of the Irish Literary Revival.

Inishmore, or Inis Mór in Irish, is the largest of the three Aran Islands lying across the mouth of Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, and it is one of the most remarkable landscapes in Europe. The island covers approximately 31 square kilometres and is built almost entirely from bare Carboniferous limestone, a landscape of extraordinary austerity and beauty where stone walls run in every direction across flat grey pavements, dividing tiny fields created over centuries by generations of islanders who carried seaweed and sand up from the shore to build soil where none existed. The island's most famous landmark is Dún Aonghasa, a prehistoric cliff-top fort perched on the edge of a sheer drop of nearly 100 metres above the Atlantic. The fort's massive semicircular walls and the band of jagged upright stones, known as a chevaux de frise, designed to impede attacking forces, date back around three thousand years and represent one of the finest examples of prehistoric fortification in Europe. Standing at the cliff edge inside Dún Aonghasa looking out over the open Atlantic is one of those experiences that stays with you: there is simply nothing between you and America. The island's human culture is equally compelling. Irish is the first language of most Inishmore residents and the island preserves a Gaeltacht community of genuine vitality. Traditional life here was shaped entirely by the sea and the stone, and the knowledge of currach building, fishing, farming and storytelling that evolved over millennia in isolation has produced a cultural landscape recognised as exceptional. J.M. Synge visited the islands in the 1890s on the advice of W.B. Yeats and drew deeply on what he found here for plays including The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea. Other prehistoric and early Christian sites are scattered across the island. Dún Eochla and Dún Eoghanachta are further hilltop forts, while the early Christian church site of Teampall Bheanáin, one of the smallest chapels in the world, clings to a hillside with improbable determination. The natural landscape includes rare limestone pavement habitats supporting plant communities found almost nowhere else in Ireland, including mountain avens and other species more typically associated with Arctic or Alpine environments. Visitors reach Inishmore by ferry from Rossaveal near Galway or from Doolin in County Clare, or by small aircraft from Connemara Airport. On the island, bicycles and the local minibus service provide the main means of getting around. The pace of life here is genuinely unhurried, and giving yourself two days rather than one will allow a much more satisfying experience of this remarkable place.

Kylemore Abbey stands in one of the most dramatically beautiful settings in Ireland, a Victorian neo-Gothic castle reflected in the still waters of Pollacapall Lough beneath the dark peaks of the Connemara mountains in County Galway. The combination of architectural grandeur and wild natural scenery makes it one of the most photographed buildings in Ireland and arguably the most romantic building on the island. The castle was built between 1867 and 1871 by Mitchell Henry, a Manchester physician who had made a substantial fortune and purchased 9,000 acres of Connemara as an expression of both love and ambition. According to family tradition, Henry first saw this location while on his honeymoon and determined to build a home there worthy of the landscape. The resulting building, designed in the Gothic Revival style with 70 rooms, a private church and its own Gothic church set within landscaped grounds, was one of the great Victorian building projects in Ireland. Tragedy struck when Henry's wife Margaret died in Egypt in 1874, and Henry subsequently built the miniature Gothic cathedral on the estate as her memorial. It remains one of the most perfectly proportioned small churches in the country. After Henry sold the estate in the 1900s it passed through several owners before being purchased by the Benedictine nuns of Ypres in 1920. The nuns had fled Belgium during the First World War after their ancient monastery was bombed, and they established a new community and a girls' school at Kylemore that continued until 2010. The Benedictine community continues to maintain the abbey and the estate today. The Victorian walled garden, restored by the nuns over many years, is one of the great horticultural achievements of contemporary Ireland. The four-acre garden is divided into pleasure and kitchen sections and was completely reconstructed using the original Victorian planting plans, bringing it back from a state of complete dereliction to its current splendour. Seasonal plantings provide colour and interest throughout the year, and the gardeners' glasshouses, restored to their original function, produce the plants that fill the beds. Visitors can explore the abbey's furnished reception rooms, the Gothic church, the walled garden and woodland walks around the lake. The café within the abbey is known for the Benedictine nuns' baking traditions, including their distinctive pottery made on the estate. Kylemore is open year-round and is an essential stop on any visit to Connemara.

Thoor Ballylee near Gort in County Galway is a medieval tower house that was the summer home of the Nobel Prize-winning poet W B Yeats from 1917 until the late 1920s, a sixteenth-century Norman tower purchased for £35 and restored as his private residence. It is among the most important literary heritage sites in Ireland, providing a direct connection to the creative years in which Yeats wrote some of his greatest poetry, including The Tower and The Winding Stair, both named for and inspired by the building. Yeats chose the tower deliberately for its symbolism, describing it as a symbol of the cold and rook-delighting heaven and weaving the winding stone stair, the battlement and the river below into the fabric of his poetry. The small rooms of the tower provide one of the most intimate literary heritage experiences in Ireland, the building furnishable in the mind with the poet's presence in a way that grander literary residences cannot achieve. The Yeats landscape of south Galway and north Clare, including Coole Park where Yeats spent summers with Lady Gregory, provides further literary heritage interest nearby. The combination of the tower, its literary associations and the surrounding west of Ireland landscape makes Thoor Ballylee a rewarding destination for anyone interested in the life and work of one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.