Month: January 2018

King Lear at Thoor

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King Lear comes to Thoor Ballylee!

via a lecture on Shakespeare’s play for schools and students in Gort on 13th February 2018. All proceeds to Thoor Ballylee.

Come and shelter from the storms. ‘Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!’

Denis Creaven, English teacher at The Institute of Education, Dublin, will lecture on several topics in King Lear and on the roles of the main characters.

The lecture will focus totally on Leaving Certificate examination requirements. Complimentary handouts of the lecture, prepared at The Institute of Education, will be distributed.

All proceeds in aid of maintenance for Yeats’s Tower.

Venue: Sullivans Hotel, Gort, Co Galway

Date: 13th February 2018

Time: 12 noon

Duration: 1.5 – 2 hours

Admission: 25 euro

Booking: yeatsthoorballylee@gmail.com Telephone Nichola on 086 855 2124

Your chance to come and hear from an angry old man (not Yeats):

‘And thou, all-shaking thunder / Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!’

Yeats candlesticks at Thoor Ballylee

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Happy New Year from Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society!

The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is delighted to announce the coming of Yeats’s original candlesticks to their home in Thoor Ballylee.

With the unmatched generosity of Joseph Hassett and Ronnie O’Gorman these magnificent large brass candlesticks (or altar-sticks) were acquired for the tower. In the 1920s they stood before the great fireplace in the family sitting room in the Norman tower itself. It must have been a magical sight, beneath the dark blue ceiling painted by George Yeats with stars and symbols and next to the old stonework, reworked by the architect William Scott. Although most of the tower’s refurbishment was done with local materials, the candlesticks themselves were probably made in Birmingham by Pearson-Page, a company specialising in authentic copies of historic metal-work in brass, copper, and iron.

Ronnie O’Gorman of Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society admires the candlesticks at their stop in Galway City Museum

The candlesticks come with excellent provenance. They were purchased in the Yeats Family Collection sale in Sotheby’s in London. The sale attracted considerable publicity  as it included not only manuscripts, drawings, and furniture from the collections of WB Yeats, but artwork from Jack B Yeats, the sisters EC and SM Yeats, and paintings and sketchbooks by their father John Butler Yeats.

Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society are very proud to have these fine objects, and there is no more fitting place for them to reside. An event to celebrate their arrival is planned in January, hosted by NUI Galway.