Seven woods whispering by a lakeshore, with the Burren Hills and Slievecarran to the west. Even without the literary associations, and the great house that was demolished in 1941, Coole Park in Co Galway is a magical, mysterious place. Nucleus for the Irish literary revival with which Lady Gregory was so closely associated, Coole had been in family hands since the 1770s. Robert Gregory (1727-1810), the great-grandfather of Lady Gregory's husband, Sir William, came home with money from India and bought the estate. He was an MP, a director and chairman of the East India Company, and he developed and planted the demesne.
The three-storey house which Robert Gregory built for himself is said to have had no particular architectural merit; for all that, it was an essential part of Irish heritage which deserved to be maintained. Visiting Coole in 1778, the travel writer, Arthur Young, described Gregory's "noble nursery, for which he is making plantations". His eldest son didn't quite live up to family standards, however; Richard Gregory was disinherited over his obsession with cock-fighting.
Richard had no children, and the big bust of Macaenas in the walled garden is described as his "most obvious contribution" to Coole today. It was a souvenir he is said to have brought home from Europe by "oxcart". He was succeeded by his younger brother, William, and William's son, who was another Robert, is said to have been the first member of the family to treat the place like home.
This Robert planed a pinetum - a plantation of different exotic pines - in the Nut wood, according to the Office of Public
Works (OPW) guidebook, The Magic of Coole by John Feehan and Grace O'Donovan. The Nut wood was subsequently nicknamed the Rich wood, on the basis that only "coniferomaniacs", as Robert described them, could afford such indulgence.
Good to his tenants, Robert wasn't so strong on administration, and had to sell two-thirds of the estate in the 1850s to pay off his racing debts. This was to have disastrous consequences for residents who had enjoyed a good relationship with their host family down through the years. The rents were raised by the new owners, and many tenants were forced to quit and emigrate. What was left of the estate was inherited by William, Robert's son, who was to marry Isabella Augusta Persse, born nearby at Roxborough in Co Galway.
She was 27, and at first she hated the dark woods and the vanishing lake or turlough on the limestone landscape. It was only after her husband died in 1892 that her curiosity was aroused. She had debts to pay off, which she made a priority to ensure that her only son, Robert, would be free of financial worries when he came of age. During years of hardship, she continued to develop the estate by buying and planting trees - and here she wrote her books and her plays. Sean O'Casey described her books and her trees as her great loves of the mind and the heart.
Her generosity knew no bounds, for her house became home to many fellow writers and artists, including W.B. Yeats, his brother, Jack, O'Casey, J.M. Synge - and all those whose initials can still be found on the copper beech in the walled garden, known as the Autograph Tree. Yeats is said to have drawn most inspiration from the estate, having arrived exhausted and broken in 1897; the imprint of the landscape runs through five books of his poetry, the most famous being The Wild Swans at Coole (1919).
But by the time he came to write some of his final verses on Coole, the happy house and park with its blossoming whitethorns, catalpa tree, ilex (evergreen oak) under which cricket matches were played, lilacs, laburnums and horse chestnuts was a very different place. In February 1903, many of the large limes and the ilex on the front lawn, along with spruce and larch, were destroyed by the big wind of that year. And in January, 1918, Lady Gregory's only child was killed in northern Italy during the first World War.
She never recovered, though she did help to rear her grandchildren, Anne, Catherine and Richard. One of the girls, Anne de Winton, recorded her happy childhood there in her book, Me and Nu. In 1920, most of the estate was sold off under the Land Acts, and acreage across the lake was sold to the Congested Districts Board and to a group of tenants. Lady Gregory held on to the house, garden and woods, and in April, 1927, she disposed of the remainder to the Department of Lands and Agriculture, and rented back the house and gardens for £100 a year. She hoped that the forestry department would maintain and develop the woodlands. As Yeats forecast, in Coole Park, 1929, it was not to be.
Lady Gregory died in 1932, and nine years later her house was destroyed. "All, all are gone, and the Big House is demolished," Oliver St John Gogarty wrote in anger. "Not one of the Seven Woods remains, woods where on a tree you could find the initials GBS or JMS; but the tree may now be on a railway wagon going to supply the demand for building material, though it makes one wonder what can be worth building in a land where there is no reverence for great times and great men."
Thankfully, the Autograph Tree missed the axe and still stands, although the catalpa tree, so beloved of its former owner, is in decay and on its side. The Seven Woods trail is one of several nature trails on the estate which is now in the hands of Duchas, the Heritage Service, and formerly the OPW.
The OPW/Duchas has done a wonderful job - restoring the old stable yard to include a visitors' centre, a limestone sundial, and coffee shop, and maintaining the park lands as a nature reserve. The audio-visual show in the centre records the dramatic loss of the house, and includes material researched by Sinead McCoole, and photographs taken by the south Galway-based photographer, Nutan.
Along with the adjoining Garryland, the reserve comprises some 1,000 acres of woodland, lakes, river, turloughs and limestone. It is in winter that the lake is at its best, haunted by the wild duck and swans that have frequented the place for centuries. The park is open all year round, while the centre is open over the summer until the end of September, with daily opening hours from 9.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. in August, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in September.
Both are well sign-posted, just north of Gort on the N18 Galway-Limerick road, while Thoor Ballylee, Yeats's tower, is also marked off the N18, on the N66 link to Ballinasloe. Kiltartan Cross, which was also immortalised by Lady Gregory through reference to her dialect "Kiltartanese", now houses a museum and millennium park. The award-winning Kiltartan Gregory Museum and Millennium Park is just three kilometres north of Gort and before Coole, and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily until the end of August, and on Sundays only from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. from September to the end of May.
For the last few years, an autumn gathering has been held at Coole which Lady Gregory's grand-daughters have attended. Sadly, Catherine Kennedy has passed away since the last reunion, and her ashes were scattered at Coole in April of this year. The theme of the forthcoming meet is Remembering Lady Gregory, and it takes place over the weekend Sept 29th to October 1st. More information is available from Sheila O'Donnellan at (091)521836 or fax (091)567421.
