Thoor Ballylee Galway
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.