Analysis: Purchased from Lady Gregory and restored by architect William A. Scott, Thoor Ballylee was a happy place for the poet and his family
W. B. Yeats famously never did marry his beloved muse Maud Gonne. Instead, he married Georgiana Hyde-Lees and settled into happy family life with her and their children. I often think he took a similar approach in not 'consummating' his relationship with Co. Sligo. The stunning landscape and folklore of that county had provided rich inspiration for his youthful poetry, but he only chose to holiday in that county, not to live permanently there. Instead Yeats chose to dwell in Co. Galway for parts of his later life, in a beautifully compact castle, known as Thoor Ballylee, near Gort.
I first visited Yeats' tower in 2018. Many previous attempts to visit over the years meant that I was well familiar with the exterior but never the interior: the winding tree-lined road that led up to it, the traditional thatched cottage that was connected to it, the tower itself perched precariously on the banks of the Streamstown River. That river is, unfortunately, prone to flooding which had thwarted so many of my visits. It was a thrill to finally enter and climb the stone steps into what Seamus Heaney regarded as 'the most important public building in Ireland’, the tower house that Yeats made his summer home with his family in the 1920s.
I’ve long been fascinated by Irish medieval tower houses, those compact three to four story mini-castles that dot the Irish countryside. Apparently Ireland has more castle buildings than all of England, Scotland and Wales put together, but many of them are in ruin. In Ireland many people associate castles with British colonialism, a prevailing attitude that led to the apathetic or even active destruction of many old buildings.
Yet, Irish tower houses have in many ways a dual architectural identity. Stone castle building is widely regarded to be an English import to Ireland, but tower houses were used by many well-off Gaelic families. They also incorporate many unique architectural features associated with Ireland, such as Irish battlements. Today, many fine tower houses in various states of ruin and repair can be seen lining the roads to major towns and cities, as many of the modern roads still roughly follow more ancient routes.
Tower houses have often been neglected, perhaps as a type of punishment for perceived collaboration with foreign oppressors
Yeats seems to have recognised the dual identity of tower houses when he wrote:
Before that ruin came, for centuries,
Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees
Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs
Might the ‘rough men at arms’ he refers to here be the Irish, and the iron clad are the English, eternally, ethereally present in such buildings, and imbibing them with unique character?
Tower houses have often been neglected, perhaps as a type of punishment for perceived collaboration with foreign oppressors. Allowing them to flounder is often just an economic excuse not be proactive in their upkeep. Too often, historic buildings in Ireland are regarded as problematic: a health and safety dread; a draw for unwanted human nuisance visitors and the potential for the ‘heritage police’ to come knocking to reprimand or enforce costly conservation or restoration. The way some landowners see it, it’s less hassle to let these disappear into the ground altogether by accident or deliberate disregard. This is often on their part perception, not reality.
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From RTÉ News, report on the re-opening of the Thoor Ballylee in 2015
Thoor Ballylee dates to the 15th century, and sat on land belonging to the Yeats' friend Lady Gregory, who owned the Coole estate nearby. When Yeats first began to visit her home, itself associated with the birth of the Irish Literary revival, the ruined tower house had captured his imagination to such an extent that he featured it in The Celtic Twilight (1893).
Eventually, Yeats bought it from her for £35 in 1916, hiring William A. Scott to oversee restoration of the tower and the cottage attached to it. Scott was an architect renowned for his Celtic revival work. He and Yeats would have had a respect for the past and for achieving authenticity and endeavored to use local materials and traditional techniques when possible.
There were some concessions to modernity, with some windows enlarged and a slate roof added. In a nod to Yeats' fascination with the occult, parts of the interior included decoration with esoteric signs and symbols. Georgina had some of the walls painted a deep, vivid blue. Scott designed the furniture too, and it was redolent of the Arts and Crafts style the architect was fond of.
In addition, Yeats' beloved Sligo is acknowledged with the profusion of Sligo chairs he had made for the building. These simple, three-legged chairs are useful for unevenly surfaced floors and look most appropriate in a medieval building. I must admit to a slight obsession with them. In 2022, I was involved in a collaboration between ATU Connemara and the National Museum of Ireland on the Our Irish Chair exhibition, which celebrated the design of this traditional chair in a contemporary context.
Although reputed be haunted, the interiors of Thoor Ballylee exude a warmth to me which comes from imagining the Yeats family spending many happy hours here. 'To go elsewhere is to leave beauty behind', Yeats wrote of it, but I imagine it was cold there in the winter. It was also possibly tough to navigate for a person in advancing years, and the family spent less time there as Yeats aged.
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From RTÉ News in 2017, more than 200 items belonging to the Yeats family have been sold at auction in London and a number of items in the collection have been acquired by the State
From the roof one can oversee the landscape of the quite lovely south Galway countryside all around. Yeats took great inspiration from this, composing lines such as:
I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth […]
Some of his most important later work was composed at Thoor Ballylee. Many poems feature the tower itself, as in his collections The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1933). It served as his later-life muse, albeit in architectural form.
The building gradually fell into disrepair from the 1930s. It was renovated and opened to the public in 1965 and became a draw for tourists. In 2009, the tower was extensively damaged by flooding and remained closed for some time.
Happily, Thoor Ballylee opened again for Yeats's 150th birthday in 2015, thanks to the Herculean efforts of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society. Although it has come to be known as Yeats’ tower, the poet had it renamed 'Thoor Ballylee’ and marked its restoration by having inscribed the following words onto the wall, back in the 1920s:
I the poet William Yeats
With old millboards and sea-green slates
And smithy work from the Gort forge
Restored this tower for my wife George
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.
It is a stunning verse that may prompts reflection on the nature of ruins and heritage, and that material things - and indeed lived lives - all fall into 'ruin' eventually. Some memory remains of what went before - for now. Now no longer at risk of besieging armies, or postcolonial destruction, the tower’s major enemy is potential damage from flooding, acting as a memento mori for us all in the face of climate change.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
