Coole Park

The Coole Park ( Páirc na irish Cuile ) is an approximately 405 -acre parkland near the Irish town of Gort in County Galway. Originally the estate including mansion belonged to the Gregory family. As Isabella Augusta Gregory died in 1932, the house degenerated more and more before the ruins were demolished in the early 1940s. By 1927 it had sold Lady Gregory to the Irish Free State. Only the works of art, photographs and texts of Gregory remained.

The park is now the Irish National Parks & Wildlife Service and is composed of forests, a number of turloughs, a 6 km long forest path and enclosed by walls, gardens. The Coole Park belongs since 1979 by an EU decision due to the birds resident to a nature reserve and is considered Cool - Garryland Complex Special Area of ​​Conservation. The park is open year round; the visitor center only from April to September.

The Autograph Tree

Within the enclosed garden of the so-called Autograph Tree stands ( signature tree), a copper beech, whose bark since the summer of 1898 perpetuated many Irish writers and friends of Lady Gregory - including WB Yeats and his brother Jack, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey, John Masefield, GW Russell, George Moore, Augustus John and later the first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde.

The poem The Wild Swans at Coole ( The Wild Swans of Coole ), which was written by WB Yeats, describes the beauty of the park and the wild swans on the local turloughs. Overall, Yeats wrote five poems about the house or the property: In addition to "The Wild Swans at Coole ", these were " I walked among the seven woods of Coole ", " In the Seven Woods ", " Coole Park, 1929 " and " Cool Park and Ballylee, 1931 ".