Our Visit to Coole Park
On 24th
April, the students from third class visited Coole Park. Once home to Lady Gregory and her husband, Coole Park
now remains a Nature Reserve. Coole
Park is one of the few
places where red squirrels still live. Red Squirrels are an endangered species
that are being killed because of a disease that the grey squirrels carry called
squirrel pox
William
Butler Yeats (Lady Gregory called him Willie) was a close friend of Lady Gregory.
Much of his work was written in Coole
Park including the wild
swans of Coole. Sir William Henry Gregory was Lady Gregory’s husband. They were
both very fond of trees and planted lots of them in Coole. Trees native to Ireland and trees from half way across the world
were in Coole Park.
Many
famous people visited Coole including George Bernard Shaw (he visited very
often, sometimes for a month at a time). These people would sign a tree called
the autograph tree. When Lady Gregory was travelling, she would bring her fan
and the famous people she met would sign it. Sir William Henry would travel
mostly with the abbey theatre .The abbey theatre is a theatre set up by W.B.Yeats and Lady Gregory and is still
standing in Dublin today.
Lady
Gregory and Sir William Henry Gregory had a son whose name was Robert. Robert
married Margaret Carraig and had three children Richard, Anne and Catherine (aka
Nu). Once World War I started, Robert joined the army and Margaret was very
busy so the children stayed with their grandmother, Lady Gregory. By this time,
Sir William Henry Gregory had passed away, so Lady Gregory always wore black to
show she was a widow. Of the children,
Richard was the eldest and Catherine, the youngest. Richard was away at
boarding school so the two girls played together. One of their favourite games
was ‘hide the thimble’ which they sometimes played with George Bernard Shaw. They were never bored at Coole Park.
When
3rd class visited Coole
Park, we did a Nature
Hunt and found what different twigs, flowers, birds and leaves look like. We all enjoyed our visit to Coole and retuned
home with smiles on our faces.
By
Molly McHale
Coole
Park Tour
On the 24th of April 3rd class
left school at ten O’clock to go to Coole Park for fun and adventure .When we
arrived
There where lots of trees, kind of like a forest. We
looked at the flowers and trees there and then met a man that was going to tell
us the names of trees and flowers there. His name was Nick. There was another
woman there called Aine.
Our class was split into two different groups. I went
in the group with Nick. Before we started Nick brought us over to a bench. He
sat down and we started talking about Hedgehogs. We talked about how they
hibernated and when they’re scared or tired they curl up into a ball. Nick gave
us a clipboard with buds, flowers, leaves and habitats. We had to tick off the
things we saw. Then everyone had to get into a group of three. I went with
Nadine and Heather. There were lots of animals there like birds. We heard the
robin, sparrow, the great blue tit and a pigeon. Nick brought us to a big shed
door. As we approached the door, Nick shown us that on the door there were bat
droppings.. Ewww! Then he removed a box from his pocket. He opened the box and
inside was a dead bat. Along the path we saw loads of trees like the oak,
beech, ash and sycamore tree were some of the trees we saw. We also saw flowers
like dandelion, cherry, bluebell and daisies.
Then we went inside and watched a
short movie about a family whose Dad went into war and his three children Anne,
Richard and Catherine have to be minded by they’re grandmother (Lady Gregory.)
The youngest girl Catherine has a nickname called New. Then we went upstairs
into the girl’s bedroom. I wouldn’t have liked to sleep in the beds they slept
in because they were so hard. There was a cylinder shaped thing in the corner
of the room that no one knew what it was. But then Aine said it was kind of the
start of cartoons. Then Aine spun it around and I looked through the holes in
it and saw a swan flying.
Then we went into the library and learned about how
W.B Yeats (William Butler Yeats) became a very famous poet and used to perform
in the Abbey theatre with Lady Gregory. After this we met up with the rest of
the class and had lunch. Thanks to all for a brilliant day. I had a great day
at Coole Park!!
By Ailbhe Sexton
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