Since Yeats made the place his own, Thoor Ballylee has always been about creativity. In keeping with this mission in modern times, The Studio at Thoor Ballylee on Saturday hosts a creative writing day, available to writers of all kinds and experiences.
Called In the footsteps of Raftery: Cill Aodáin to Ballylee, the day is hosted and curated by renowned poet Terry McDonagh. Taking inspiration (like Yeats did!) from Antoine Ó Raifteiri and the landscapes and stories of the area, the workshop helps track new works of poetry and prose from genesis to completion.
The emphasis will be on the writing of poetry and short prose, a workshop designed for all levels and experiences of writers to join in, create, present and discuss. “Like Raftery”, says Terry, “we will go on a creative journey“.
In the footsteps of Raftery: Cill Aodáin to Ballylee
Creative Writing Day
with Terry McDonagh
11am – 4pm Saturday 11 May 2024
The Studio at Thoor Ballylee
Charge only €20 (with tea/coffee and snacks included!)
The deadline for all applications is Friday 17 May – so fast approaching! All details on how to apply are available here on our website. For this wonderful opportunity the successful candidates will be notified by 7 June for the July residency and 5 July for the September residency.
Following the success of the pilot Artist-in-Residence programme in 2023, there will be two residencies this year, each one running for two weeks, one in July and one in September.
Each residency will highlight the various talents of the Yeats’s family. W.B. Yeats’s genius for drama, poetry and literature is the focus of July’s residency. The September residency highlights the talents of his siblings, Jack, Lily, and Elizabeth as well as their father, the painter John Butler Yeats. The focus will be on the visual arts, textiles, embroidery and printing.
Artists working in any of these areas are encouraged to apply.
What the residencies offer:
Each successful candidate will be provided with accommodation, local travel costs and a modest daily stipend. They will have access to The Studio at Thoor Ballylee where they can work during their residency.
What the artists will provide:
During their residencies, each artist will engage with local artists in their genre at agreed times. They will also demonstrate their craft to the wider public through exhibitions, performances and/or workshops.
When is the deadline?
The deadline for applications is Friday 17 May and the successful candidates will be notified by 7 June for the July residency and 5 July for the September residency.
As evidenced by these photographs, our volunteers have been busy at work, preparing W. B. Yeats’s former summer home for Easter reopening.
This means digging, mending, clearing, patching, cleaning, assembling, readying in all possible ways the tower and the gardens, the cottage, the studio, the exhibitions, the fire, the tea, and everything ready for a warm welcome!
Thoor Ballylee opens to visitors from 11 am to 4 pm over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend and from Thursday to Sunday during the month of April.
April opening 2024
11 – 4pm Thursday – Sunday
We look forward to your visit during the 2024 season!
In our continuing celebrations for the centenary of WB Yeats Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, this week is maybe the best of the year for visiting Thoor Ballylee!
Support Culture Night and its nationwide events on Friday 22nd September by visiting Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’ Tower, from 5-7 pm. For one night only there is free admission to the tower and cottage and all our exhibitions.
And this time you explore the Galway home of Poet Laureate W.B. Yeats, you can enjoy wonderful music from Eileen Fleming and Frank Wall, as well as the customary cup of tea and cake.
A reminder too that this week Nobel Words, a one-act play written by Peggy Monahan, is premiered at Thoor Ballylee on Thursday 21 September at 8pm, with support from Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, Galway County Council and Creative Ireland.
Tickets are €10 and can be reserved by ringing 087 6360895.
Nobel Words travels to other venues including the Town Hall Theatre, Gort on 29th and 30th September, 8pm, and The Yeats Building, Sligo, on 7th October at 1pm. All tickets for these performances are available through the number above – or at the doors, but only if numbers permit.
Celebrating the Centenary of W.B. Yeats Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature
Nobel Words, a one-act play written by Yeats Thoor Ballylee Board Member Peggy Monahan, will be premiered at Thoor Ballylee on Thursday, 21st September at 8pm.
Performed by the Wild Swan Theatre Company, the play focuses on that momentous week in Yeats’s life when he learned of his Nobel Prize award. As Yeats’s gives a lecture on the founding of the Abbey Theatre, he invokes the memories of those who helped him along the way, in particular Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge.
Tickets are €10 and can be reserved by ringing 087 6360895.
Nobel Words travels to other venues including the Town Hall Theatre, Gort on 29th and 30th September, 8pm, and The Yeats Building, Sligo, on 7th October at 1pm. All tickets available through the number above – or at the doors but only if numbers permit.
Funding and support for the performance have been provided by the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, Galway County Council and Creative Ireland.
Join us for a series of special events at Thoor Ballylee between 12-20 August. Heritage Week celebrates Ireland’s cultural, built and natural heritage. And don’t forget our poetry prize closes for submissions 18 August 2023.
Traditional Hand Spinning
Join the Midwest Spinners for a live demonstration of this traditional hand craft. You will have the chance to try spinning and weaving on drop spindles and sample looms.
Photo exhibition by Ekaterina Ivanova revealing the secrets of Hidden Ireland including a selection of unique sites in County Galway, many connected with the history of Thoor Ballylee.
18th and 20th August, 11am-5pm. Free
Hidden Ireland Talk: Mills and Traditions
A talk about mills, milling and handing on the tradition, by Marie Finnerty, daughter of the last miller at Finnerty Mills. She will share the knowledge from the past about mills, milling and handing on the tradition on August 18th at 2 pm.
Fun in the Woods – activities through Irish, withÁine Ní Fhlatharta
Parents and children – come and spend some time in the woods and enjoy Forest School nature activities through Irish. Connect with Ireland’s amazing woodland ecology, its heritage, beauty and our native language.
19th August, 10am-4pm, Free
Booking Essential: Limited spaces per session please book by email: aine@greenguide.ie or phone: 087 1626760
In honour of the 100th anniversary of W.B. Yeats being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is launching the Yeats Thoor Ballylee International Poetry Prize.
The closing date for submissions is midnight, 18th August 2023. Get your work in!
We welcome The Marine Singers Choir, from Renville, Oranmore, for their magical first performance in Thoor Ballylee.
With soprano Helen Hancock conducting, and pianist Teresa Turner, the repertoire will include works by WB Yeats, marking the centenary year of Yeats receiving the Nobel Prize.
Down By the Salley Gardens
Friday 12 May, 8pm
Tickets €15 (online and on the door see below)
All proceeds to Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society
Down by the Salley Gardens
A musical evening with the Marine Singers and guests at Thoor Ballylee
The Marine Singers, a renowned Galway based choir led by conductor and singer Helen Hancock, perform a much-anticipated concert on Friday May 12th, 8pm at the historic Thoor Ballylee, the former home of renowned poet WB Yeats. This will be the choir’s first-ever performance in this unique and atmospheric venue, which is known for its magical acoustics. The Choir are celebrating 10 years since their formation for the inaugural Galway Choir Factor event in 2013.
The concert promises to be a feast for the senses, featuring classical and contemporary music, performed by the talented Marine Singers, as well as local young musicians Lilian Owens and Sean Hancock from Coole Music. The programme has been carefully curated to showcase the choir’s versatility and range, and to offer a memorable musical experience for all who attend. Expect songs from the sixteenth century to the present day, inspired by the water – including The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre and Die Forelle (The Trout) by Schubert with music by Dowland, Fauré, Vaughan Williams, Ola Gjeilo and a selection of Irish airs.
Helen Hancock, who has been conducting the choir since 2018, is not only a skilled conductor, but also a soprano with a stunning voice. She will also perform during the concert, adding an extra layer.
The Galway Shape Note Singers, another highly regarded choir, will also be joining the Marine Singers for this special occasion. Their collaboration promises to be a highlight of the evening, as they blend their voices together in a celebration of music ,community and the powerful distinctive sound of Sacred Harp singing.
All proceeds go towards the upkeep of Thoor Ballylee.
The choir gratefully acknowledges the support of Opus II Music Store Galway.
The Marine Singers has been in existence for 10 years, originally made up of staff from the Marine Institute based at Rinville, Oranmore under their conductor Carmel Dooley. The choir welcomed Oranmore conductor/soprano Helen Hancock as conductor in September 2018. Live rehearsals resumed after the pandemic in September 2022 and performances since include Galway Mental Health Association’s Annual Celebration of Choral Music at St Nicholas Church in October 2022. In december 2022, the choir performed a lunchtime concert at Oranmore Library and sang carols at the Cancer Care West campus at UCHG. The choir looks forward to performing with their director Helen Hancock at Clifden Arts Festival in September 2023.
Helen Hancock is a freelance soprano whose passions include art song, chamber music and baroque music. Helen’s most recent performance was a recital at Farmleigh House, Dublin with pianist Órán Halliagn. Helen was a recipient of an Arts Council Agility Award in 2022 which funded coaching on Baroque and lieder repertoire in Berlin and she performed at the Bloomsday 100 celebrations at the Irish Embassy in Berlin in June 2022. Helen will be in Dingle on May 20th in recital with composer and pianist Criostóir Ó Loingsigh and in the Galway Early Music Festival on May 27th with Mark keane and Vox Orbis . Helen has been on the faculty of Coole Music and Arts for twelve years as a recorder and singing teacher and is the Director of Whistleblowers Recorder Ensemble.
Preparations have been continuing all month and all week and now we are delighted to say all is ready for the reopening of Yeats’s tower Thoor Ballylee for the 2023 season on Easter Saturday 8 April!
The highest room in the tower: Theresa and Kathleen take on the “Strangers’ Room”
Adam cleans the windows
Carpentry and tree management in the grounds
The ever-present Lelia Doolan with some of our magnificent volunteers (and dog).
Yeats had written to John Quinn in the summer of 1918 about preparations for what was then Ballylee Castle:
We are surrounded with plans. This morning arrived designs from the drunken man of genius [the architect William] Scott for two beds. The war is improving the work for being unable to import anything we have bought the whole contents of an old mill, great beams & three inch planks & old paving stones; & the local carpenter & masons & blacksmith are to work for us.
(WB Yeats to John Quinn 18 July 1918)
It is a pleasure to report the continuing work of community craftspeople and volunteers to keep alive Yeats’s dream of a western hub for poetry and artistic endeavour. Thank you to all, young and old, who helped in so many ways over the past few weeks to prepare the tower and grounds for the Easter reopening!
Thoor Ballylee opens Easter Saturday 8 April from 11am, and is open 11am-4pm for the whole Easter weekend.
April opening times will be 11am-4pm from Thursday to Sunday inclusive.
From 1 May the tower will open daily from 10am-5pm throughout the summer. We look forward to welcoming you back, or meeting you there for the first time!
Remembering the time of WB Yeats’s death eighty-four years ago, when according to WH Auden he ‘disappeared in the dead of winter’, this year sees WB Yeats’s 158th birthday, and the 100th anniversary of his Nobel Prize for Literature from 1923. At Thoor Ballylee we look back and look forward: we reflect on the past year’s happenings, and anticipate the exciting new season.
The clear out of the exhibitions and fittings in the tower and cottage has long been complete and flood barriers are in place until the spring. Many coats of paint were applied to the downstairs area; rich velvet curtains replaced rotten door & jambs (with the help of Anderson contractors); the audio-visual presentation is newly updated ready for the new year. Through this frosty winter the tower waits in welcome, as for so many years, for pilgrims and visitors from around the world.
2022 Season
Following an enforced two-year closure, we were delighted to back in business to in-person, on-site visitors. The past twelve months for Thoor Ballylee brought lots of hard work and many challenges, but it was our pleasure to welcome back three thousand visitors during the 2022 season, all eager to explore the home of WB Yeats and attend the many organised events.
This year’s season opening began with a warm welcome back as we hosted afternoon tea at Thoor Ballylee. This was followed by an evening concert with Ciaran Cannon & guests, all in aid of the Gort Welcomes Ukraine Fund.
The season also featured:
Two performances of Yeats Joyce and Nora by our local Wild Swan Theatre Company;
an evening with Soprano Helen Hancock;
the annual Poet’s Picnic for WB Yeats, attended by our generous benefactor, Joe Hassett;
…and a special performance of Nora by The Curlew Theatre Company, to mark Bloomsday 100 years of James Joyce’s Ulysses, with musical interlude by Nicola and Karina Cahill.
All week long during Heritage Week as ever the local community took the chance to engage, and the Studio @ Thoor Ballylee was the venue for a book launch on the History of the GAA by Steve Dolan.
For Culture Night Jo Beth Young and guests treated us to an enchanting evening of stories and song with her Shadow Navigation Show.
The long-awaited in-person return of the Yeats Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering brought many Augusta Gregory and Yeats enthusiasts, including many Gregory family members, to Thoor, which hosted day two of the Gathering.
The return of The Songbirds brought our visitor events for 2022 to a close.
But that was not all. Thoor Ballylee was represented at the inaugural Gort Community Fair.
The Society was chosen as a delegate in the EU’s Cultural Heritage in Action Programme and was included on the list of Best Practice Sites in Europe.
Mary Hanley’s sons paid a visit and donated a precious and valuable collection of books to the tower.
And schools and education groups returned to the tower to learn about its history and heritage.
We hosted a civil wedding ceremony for a lovely Texan couple and a several wedding parties chose Thoor and its surroundings for wedding day photos.
And his was a year for documentaries! – starring Miriam Margolyes, Julia Bradbury, and our own Ronnie O’Gorman and Rena McAllen. Highlighting the natural world and cultural impact of Thoor Ballylee, RTE, Channel 4, Bat Conservation Ireland, and a German TV crew came to film in the tower beside the stream at Ballylee.
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to our generous benefactors for their continued support. This year with their help we were able to acquire an original Elizabeth Corbett Yeats picture from 1934.
Our thanks go to our army of volunteers and craftworkers and professional contractors helping us at Thoor Ballylee.
Most of all, our appreciation goes to the fantastic group of volunteers (ten of whom joined our team this year) who threw open the doors and shutters, lit the fire and the candles and welcomed in the many guests, pre-booked tours, schoolchildren, and other groups and individual visitors, seven days a week over a period of six months. We thank Pat O Looney, Paul O Donnell, Tonii Kelly, Pauline Kennelly, John Morgan, Aidan Eames, Anne Leahy, Gerry Conneely, Dido, Ruth Lynch Delassus, Gerry Wynne, and more! The call for a Meitheal for the spring clean was responded to with much enthusiasm.
To our reliable car park team Gus and JJ who guaranteed our safety during events, thank you, and for lighting our way to the tower – so spectacularly – thank you JJ Finn.
To our mainstays – the hardworking Nichola Baverstock and Anthony Coppinger – Míle Buíochas.
All requests re maintenance were speedily addressed by local partners: shutters were replaced and painted, presses, windows & doors repaired, a new boiler installed, leaking toilet fixed and a grand new bridge erected in the picnic park.
Thanks go to Eugene Murphy, work on renovating and reinstating the mill wheel continues. The project has caught the interest of former Minister and TD Frank Fahey and other locals, and as a result, a fundraising drive has been set in motion to fund the restoration of the mill wheel.
Let us not forget the tremendous support of Failte Ireland and our many donors and friends.
We have completed another successful and inspiring year at Thoor Ballylee. Whether flood waters arrive or not, we look forward to a wonderful new year in 2023.
Míle Buíochas do cách. Meanwhile if you’d like to contribute however modestly to all the cultural and community work that we do and to the upkeep of this unique building and surrounds please visit our donate page.
Our first visitors of 2023 came all the way from Tennessee! We hope to see you too during this coming season.
For our final night of the season at Thoor Ballylee on Saturday 8 October, we are delighted to welcome back The Songbirds. Tickets are selling fast and there is limited space.
The Songbirds
featuring Annie & Marie Burns
and
Kate Purcell
with guest Doug Robinson
sing Thoor Ballylee
7.30pm Saturday 8 October
Tickets EU15
Please call Thoor Ballylee on 091631436 mobile 0858620935 or email yeatsthoorballylee@gmail.com to reserve your ticket.
This is the last event of our first season for a while fully reopened to in-person visitors – come and experience the warmth and love with live music at Yeats’s Tower! Please call Thoor Ballylee on 091631436 mobile 0858620935 or email yeatsthoorballylee@gmail.com to reserve your ticket.
Thoor Ballylee 