Coole Park is a nature reserve of approximately 1,000 acres (4 km2) operated by the Irish National Parks & Wildlife Service and is located a few miles west of Gort, County Galway, Ireland. The park contains extensive woodlands and a series of turloughs with 6 kilometres of signposted nature trails plus a formal walled garden. The park was formerly the estate of Lady Gregory before being sold to the Irish state in 1927. Her home had been damaged in the Irish Civil War (1922-23).
The walled garden contains an autograph tree that is engraved with initials of many of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival who were personal friends of Lady Gregory including William Butler Yeats, Edward Martyn, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey. The Yeats poem The Wild Swans at Coole was inspired by the beauty of the swans in the turlough at Coole Park. Yeats's home at Thoor Ballylee was just 3 miles away; he also wrote "Coole Park, 1929", a poem that describes the park as a symbol for the revival of Irish literature:
"Here traveller, scholar, poet, take your stand, / When all these rooms and passages are gone / When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound / And saplings root among the broken stone."
By the 1960s the state had allowed the Gregorys' former house to fall into a ruin, a neglect deplored by Micheál Mac Liammóir in 1964. Indeed, according to the National Archives, the building was actively demolished in 1941.
Coole Park is part of the Coole-Garryland Complex Special Area of Conservation (site code SAC 252) and the whole of the park is designated a Special Protection Area for birds under the EU 1979 Birds Directive (site code SPA 107).
The grounds are open to the public all year round (free admission). A visitor centre operates during high season (April to September inclusive). The center offers a tea room, an audio/visual presentation on Lady Gregory and the literary history of Coole Park, and also a multi-media exhibition called "Coole Park through the eyes of 'Me and Nu', Granddaughters of Lady Gregory".
Famous quotes containing the word park:
“Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his “comb” and “spare shirt,” “leathern breeches” and “gauze cap to keep off gnats,” with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)