Attractions
Gort Golf Club
Gort Golf Club is set in 160 acres of picturesque parkland on the edge of the world famous Burren and within 200 yards of the historic monastic settlement of Kilmacduagh.
Christy O’Connor Jnr. was particularly excited by the new course at Gort, where he regards, the four Par 3's as among the best on offer at any course in Ireland. His equally famous uncle, Christy Senior and his good friends Eamonn Darcy and Des Smyth were loud in their praise of both the course and the club house.
Gort Golf Club is located at Castlequarter, approximately 2 miles from the town of Gort. We are just 45 minutes drive from Shannon International Airport and 30 minutes from Galway City, both of which are on the N17. Galway City, which has an abundance of excellent accommodation for the visitor, is 130 miles due west from Dublin.
Thoor Ballylee
Thoor Ballylee (aka Ballylee Castle) is a four story 16th century keep which was bought and restored by W. B. Yeats, who lived there from 1921 to 1929. His residence there is commemorated by a stone tablet with some lines of verse by him. The castle now contains a museum with mementos of the poet, including the first edition of his works.
Coole Park
Coole Park was once the home of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852 - 1932) -- a famous dramatist, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in Ireland and a friend of the poet William Butler Yeats. Coole Park is now a national park open to the public all year round. Marked nature trails weave through many different specimens of trees and plants, many of which were imported from abroad by the Gregorys.
Lady Gregory's love of Coole and its 'Seven Woods', immortalised by Yeats, is manifested in her writings and those of her literary guests.
"These woods have been well loved, well tended by some who came before me, and my affection has been no less than theirs. The generations of trees have been my care, my comforters. Their companionship has often brought me peace." - Lady Gregory, Coole, 1931
She was one of the most important figures in the Irish Literary Revival of the early 20th century, not only because of her achievements as a playwright, but also because of the way she transformed Coole into a focal point for those who shaped that movement, making it a place they would return to time and time again to talk, to plan, to derive inspiration.
But the woods and lakes at Coole were richer than Yeats divined. The 'Seven Woods', which so enchanted Lady Gregory and her guests, held whispers of a more ancient ancestry, of which the literary visitors were scarcely aware: remnants of the earlier natural forest cover, and the disappearing lake and river are part of the finest turlough complex not merely in Ireland but in all the world.
Kiltartan Museum and Millennium Park
Award-winning museum which includes works of Lady Gregory, local history, artefacts, photos, manuscripts and early 20th Century classroom. The Kiltartan Gregory Museum and Millennium Park; located two miles from Gort on Galway Road at the historic spot "Kiltartan Cross" where the blind poet Rafferty met and fell in love with the "Beauty of Ballylee" Máire ní hEidhie. The building was a National School built in 1892.
The Museum specialises in the life and times of Lady Augusta Gregory and in local history and genealogy. It also contains an old Irish classroom and a sales outlet for the history of Kiltartan, "Many Leaves One Root". This building was a National School built in 1892 at the behest of the local landlord, Sir William Gregory of Coole Park, Gort. The Museum was opened by Mary Robinson on the 8th August, 1996. The Museum is Largely devoted to the works of Augusta Lady Gregory (1852 - 1932), widow of Sir William.
The most renowned member of the Gregory family was Lady Gregory. During her time there, Coole became the meeting place for writers, chief of whom was W.B. Yeats who later bought Thoor Ballylee.
