Artist Róisín Curé visited the tower for Yeats2015 and the Yeats 150th birthday celebrations and what emerged were some beautiful images and a fine essay, extracts of which are featured here.

‘After a few more twists and turns, the tower of Thoor Ballylee appeared through the trees, rising to our right on the edge of the road. Streamstown River, barely more than a stream in the dry summer weather, runs at the foot of the tower. Soft afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees all around the tower and the thatched cottage built on the far side of the tower. Later, I overheard someone say that the river in flood could rise to the roof level of the thatch, but it was hard to picture on the summer day of our visit. What I could picture, however, was John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara wading through the river in John Ford’s The Quiet Man, for a scene which was filmed here at Thoor Ballylee…’

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