heritage week

Heritage Week at Thoor Ballylee

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Heritage Week 12-20 August

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.

Saturday 12th August 11am to 4pm, Free

Find out more

Hidden Ireland Photo Exhibition

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.

Friday 18th August, 2pm. Free

Find out more

Spraoi sa Choill – gníomhaíochaí trí Ghaeilge

Fun in the Woods – activities through Irish, with Áine 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

Find out more

And don’t forget!

Yeats Thoor Ballylee International Poetry Prize

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!

Find out more

Heritage Week at Thoor Ballylee

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Hurling heritage

On Saturday August 20th at 3pm, a free lecture at Yeats’ Tower, Thoor Ballylee, explores the hurling heritage of Galway. It highlights the dominance of South Galway in the early history of the GAA, and the season of 1910 which saw Ardrahan win the biggest ever county championship. Limited edition charity booklets on Ardrahan’s triumph in the Big Season of 1910 [€10 each] will be available with all proceeds going to Kiltartan Museum and Thoor Ballylee.

Wild Swans Theatre

On Sunday 21 August at 6pm Heritage week is concluded by a play performed by The Wild Swan Theatre company. Written by Joe Hassett and directed by Marion Cahill-Collins, this explores the intertwined lives of Yeats and Joyce and Nora Barnacle. Admission to the play which starts at 6pm inside the tower is €10 with tickets available on the door.

Wild Child at Thoor Ballylee

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Come away, O human child! 

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand…

WB Yeats ‘The Stolen Child’ (1888)

Would you like to explore the natural beauty of WB Yeats’ home at Thoor Ballylee in County Galway? Hear his folk and fairy tales, make magic wands and fairy doors? Come and share his love for nature and the legends of the past?

Then join us for our Wild Child celebration this Heritage Week on Wednesday 18 August!.

The event is designed to connect children to the wild wonder of the place, and ignite the magic of the realm that Yeats so loved. There are fairy tales and fables from Yeats as well as poetry and song. We are also preparing a fairy walk with fairy volunteers imparting exciting titbits of woodland lore to children and adults.

This is a free event, but due to Covid 19 restrictions registration for workshops is necessary.

Workshops will be held at the following times:

Wild Child Workshops

Wednesday 18 August 2021

11am, 1pm, 3pm

Suitable for children under 12 years of age, and all those young at heart.

For more information and registration see Wild Child at Thoor Ballylee on Eventbrite.

Please note due to public health guidelines the interior of Thoor Ballylee remains closed for visitors. However our grounds and walks are open to all year round.

Any questions regarding the Wild Child event, please email Anna on aodonnell111@gmail.com.

Then and Now: stories and folklore at Kiltartan and Thoor

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THEN AND NOW

our intangible culture in South Galway

 

Celebrating folklore & storytelling for Heritage Week

with playwright Marina Carr

storyteller Rory O’ Shaughnessy 

folklorist and musician PJ Curtis

and the children of Kiltartan

 

Saturday 15 August 2-5pm Kiltartan Gregory Museum

Saturday 22 August 2-5pm Thoor Ballylee

On Saturday, 15 August 2-5pm  children are invited to come to the Kiltartan Museum  2pm-5pm to see the copybooks of the children who visited their grandparents, parents and elderly neighbours a hundred years ago, and wrote down their customs and beliefs in the copybooks which will be on view in the museum.  The children of today can see the museum and embark on a similar project: to visit their older relations and neighbours and to record in notebooks or on their phones, over the months until Christmas, the ways and practices of today in beliefs, customs, cures, stories  and so on. The storyteller, Rory O’ Shaughnessy, will be on hand to help, and there will be other talks outdoors,  and a picnic in the museum grounds.

On the following Saturday, 22 August 2 -5pm pm,  we will follow up, outdoors at Thoor Ballylee, with the children who have decided to take on the project,  as well as their families and any interested people. The playwright Marina Carr will talk about Lady Gregory’s folklore collections, and about myths and legends of old  – and the folklore and musical expert and historian, PJ Curtis will be present with others to picnic and to share stories and knowledge to get this enjoyable heritage project started with gusto!

Notebooks and support will be provided during this winter and we plan a booklet and recording of the findings and an award celebration in 2021.

For more contact Lelia Doolan, Yvonne Nolan, Nichola Baverstock, Rena McAllen – try  086 825 2164!

 

 

Heritage Week Nature Walk

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Come along to our exciting latest event:

Heritage Week Nature Walk at Thoor Ballylee

with Gordon D’Arcy

Saturday 19th August 2017 at 2pm

Free & all welcome!

 _________________________________________________________________________
                                               A rat or water-hen
Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream.
We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,
And the light proves that he is reading still.
W.B. Yeats, from ‘The Phases of the Moon’ (1918)
Yeats paid great attention to the details of the natural world, and wrote about them. The number of birds in his poetry for instance is almost uncountable. For him and his family the surrounds of Thoor Ballylee, County Galway, were an astonishing natural treasure, as well as grounds for myth. His wife George dropped a line out of the window into the stream to fish for trout for dinner, while the children played in the woods and fields beyond.
To mark the beginning of Heritage Week at Thoor Ballylee, Gordon D’Arcy, environmentalist & author, will lead a nature walk around Thoor Ballylee and along the Ballylee River on Saturday 19th August from 2pm to 4pm.
Explore the flora & fauna of the area and examine the workings of a venerable old mill.
All welcome to this free family  event.

Thoor Ballylee open for September

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The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is delighted to announce in this special anniversary year of Yeats2015, W.B.Yeats’s venerable tower will remain open for the month of September.

Please note: revised opening hours apply: the tower will now be open 10-1 weekdays and 12-4 on weekends. Now on view is a newly restored film about the tower and its resident poet, and an interior unseen for many years.

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As well as viewing from outside the stern Hiberno-Norman defensive tower with its bridge, stream, and pleasant gardens, this summer for the first time in years visitors can come in and view at firsthand the tower and cottage interior.

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Inspect the study and diningroom, imagine the poet’s wife George fishing from the window, cross the threshold of the old bedroom, climb the winding stair, meet our resident bats in the rafters, and pace on the battlements as did Yeats himself, enjoying wonderful 360º views of the surrounding countryside. Then return downstairs to browse our exhibition of local artists, buy keepsakes at our gift shop, talk further with our friendly volunteer guides, or just sit with a complementary cup of tea.

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On show for the first time in our new audio-visual space under slates in the old cottage is a newly-restored film about W.B.Yeats and the tower from RTÉ, written and narrated by the inimitable Yeats scholar, the late Augustine Martin.

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Altogether an unmissable experience. To find out more, contact us, or come and join us as a friend and help us keep this indispensable piece of heritage open for future generations.

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Thoor open for Heritage Week!

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As part of the nationwide Heritage week celebrations, Thoor Ballylee is open all week from 10-6, with a specially reduced admission price of 5 Euro on Sundays. Now on view in our new audio-visual space is newly-restored film about the tower and its connection with resident poet W.B.Yeats.

11889554_10152960372431954_5887804274989013800_n

As well as viewing from outside the stern Hiberno-Norman defensive tower with its bridge, stream, and pleasant gardens, this summer for the first time in years visitors can come in and view at firsthand the tower and cottage interior.

11950376_10152960365136954_6408538634811827438_o

Inspect the study and diningroom, imagine the poet’s wife George fishing from the window, cross the threshold of the old bedroom, climb the winding stair, meet our resident bats in the rafters, and pace on the battlements as did Yeats himself, enjoying wonderful 360º views of the surrounding countryside. Then return downstairs to browse our exhibition of local artists, buy keepsakes at our gift shop, talk further with our friendly volunteer guides, or just sit with a complementary cup of tea.

11228525_10152960378921954_1344859878975755755_o

On show for the first time in our new audio-visual space under slates in the old cottage is a newly-restored film about W.B.Yeats and the tower from RTÉ, written and narrated by the inimitable Yeats scholar, the late Augustine Martin.

11895200_10152960374036954_2946881757788372188_o

Altogether an unmissable experience for Heritage Week. To find out more, contact us, or come and join us as a friend and help us keep this indispensable piece of heritage open for future generations.

11947574_10152960382606954_3413947843240256318_n