Coole Park
Open all year round. No admission fees. Heritage centre. Tea rooms.
At the end of the 19th century Coole House, the home of Lady Gregory, was a meeting place for a dazzling list of poets, playwrights, writers and artists, among them Yeats, Shaw, Synge, Masefield and Augustus John. The house was pulled down in 1941, but the surrounding parkland has since been salvaged and carefully rearranged. A tunnel-like arcade of huge holly trees leaning over the avenue provides a fitting mysterious entrance to this former haunt of bards of the 'Celtic twilight'.
In the walled garden is the remarkable 'autograph tree', a copper beech on which famous guests carved their initials, still distinguishable, such as W.B.Y and G.B.S. It is now protected by a large cylindrical grille to prevent lesser scribes from following their example.
About a mile south-west of the site of the house is the lovely Coole Lough, whose swans inspired Yeats' poem The Wild Swans of Coole. The lake is a 'turlough': its bed is porous limestone and its level of water varies greatly over the year depending on the height of the water table.