Month: March 2022

Countdown to Easter Reopening

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Easter reopening

Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is delighted to announce our Easter reopening, and welcoming back our visitors – after a two year closure – on Easter Saturday 16th April 2022!

It’s been a hard road, but after two years socially distanced or online, and with plenty of ongoing work to the thatch, the mill, and latterly our spring clean-up – and especially thanks to our many helpers, contractors, and volunteers (to help or join us see below) we are primed and ready, and excited to welcome you back!

The new thatch at Thoor Ballylee

Kiltartan Gregory Museum

Meanwhile we highlight other gems of the area for our visitors, and invite you to visit the award-winning Kiltartan Gregory Museum. The following film showcases this hidden gem, based in the old schoolhouse at Kiltartan Cross (mentioned in Yeats’s poem ‘The Irish Airman Foresees His Death’), devoted to Lady Gregory and Yeats and featuring all kinds of fascinating art, books, letters, publications, and memorabilia concerning the area and its literary heritage.

In the run up to our spring reopening, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is presenting the online premieres of new films about Yeats and Galway. Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society youtube channel

With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, with camera and editing by Morgan Creative and Seanchas Productions, and featuring local musicians and contributors, these short films are voiced by luminaries like Marie Mullen from Druid Theatre and some of our very own members. They highlight places in County Galway important to Yeats and which feature in some of his finest poems, from ‘The Tower’ to (as here) ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’, as a ghost returns to old haunts.

Come and help!

Thoor Ballylee historic fourteenth Century tower house, once home to Nobel Prize winning poet WB Yeats and his family, is managed and run by an amazing group of volunteers. We are currently adding to our volunteer pool so if you have a love of literature or history, enjoy interacting with people and have four hours a week to spare, please contact Thoor Ballylee at +353 85 862 0935, email thoorballylee@gmail.com, or contact us above.

We are a voluntary group with no permanent external funding. We’d love for you to help us keep this unique heritage site going for all of us today, and for future generations. To join us or donate any amount large or small see the donate page above.

Returning to Thoor Ballylee

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New films about Yeats and Galway

In the run up to our spring reopening, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is presenting the online premiere of new films about Yeats and Galway. These short films highlight places in County Galway important to Yeats and which feature in some of his finest poems, from ‘The Tower’ to ‘Coole and Ballylee 1931’.

With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, drawing on both their expertise and funding, and the work of some crack producers and content creators, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society produced this film series highlighting the importance of the tower and the Society’s work in “Spreading the News” about the literary connections of WB Yeats and beyond. These films are designed to attract audiences near and far to the delights of Galway, and help bring visitors to Thoor Ballylee and the many other important sites in our region.

Returning to Thoor Ballylee

Returning to Thoor Ballylee features a thin figure in cloak and hat – the ghost of an old poet perhaps? – returning to a place where he was once so fulfilled.

This reintroduction to the landscape and sounds of Thoor Ballylee features Yeats’s poems ‘To Be Carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee’ and ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’. It is voiced by Marion Cox and Ronnie O’Gorman with camera by Morgan Creative.

The film inaugurates Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society’s own YouTube channel, on which more content is expected over the next weeks and months. The film is part of an ongoing series promoting Thoor Ballylee, Kiltartan, Coole Park, Doorus House and The Flaggy Shore.

The film invites you, too, to return to Thoor Ballylee this spring, in the summer, sometime in the future, or just in imagination. Long live the returning spirit of WB Yeats and his family!

Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society youtube channel