Lissadell House and Gardens, Sligo, Ireland

elle@lissadellhouse.com

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Alpine Garden at Lissadell by Pamela Cassidy

LISSADELL HOUSE AND GARDENS

OPEN

Saturday 21 June 2014 to Sunday 14 September inclusive, 10.30am to 6pm every day

Tickets: 12 euro for adults & 6 euro for children

For this you can spend the whole day at Lissadell, from 10.30 - 6; you can visit, at your leisure, the Exhibition Galleries (Yeats, Markievicz, WW 1 centenary & the Riding Arena); wander through the Alpine & Kitchen Gardens, take a guided house tour and enjoy the woodland walks. All for your ticket price. Click on DIRECTIONS above for travel information. Click on VISITOR INFO for details of house tours, exhibitions, gardens and our tea rooms, and also for Season/Weekend/Family tickets. There is no wheelchair access to the House, or to the upstairs galleries in the Coach House & Riding Arena. This is a country estate, so be sure to wear comfortable outdoor walking shoes.

Lissadell house by Pamela Cassidy

"That old grey mansion": W. B. Yeats

The Lissadell Estate is the home of Edward Walsh, his wife Constance Cassidy and their seven children. Writing about Lissadell for the Sunday Times forty-four years ago the BBC's Anne Robinson ('The Weakest Link') observed that "the garden is overgrown, the greenhouses are shattered and empty, the stables beyond repair, the roof of the main block leaks badly and the paintings show patches of mildew". After 70 years of neglect an intensive programme of restoration - without any public funding - has taken place in the House, Gardens, Stable Block and grounds since 2004 and Lissadell is once again a place of beauty. Click here for the text of Anne Robinson's article. No grants of any kind were made in respect of any part of the restoration, either for the house, the gardens or any part of the grounds. Every penny spent was earned by us.

OUR VISION is to transform the estate into a flagship for tourism in Sligo and the North West, whilst providing a secure environment for our children and for our visitors. We do not wish to exploit Lissadell commercially but to restore the house and gardens to their former glory, make Lissadell self-sustaining and protect this crucible of Ireland's historic and literary heritage.

Edward Walsh, Constance Cassidy and family

"It’s a wonderful place – if you have to choose just one visitor attraction in Ireland to visit, make it Lissadell. And allow plenty of time": Georgina Campbell's Ireland Guide.

Lissadell is famous as the childhood home of Constance Markievicz, her sister Eva Gore Booth and her brother Josslyn Gore Booth. Constance was one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, and was the first woman to be elected to Dail Eireann, where she served as Minister for Labour (thus becoming the first woman minister in a modern European democracy), and was also the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons at Westminster, London (where she declined to take her seat). Eva was a poet of distinction and an active suffragist, clashing with the young Winston Churchill over barmaids' rights in 1908. Josslyn created at Lissadell one of the premier horticultural estates in Europe. This horticultural enterprise has now been recreated at Lissadell. Sligo born poet W. B. Yeats was friendly with the Gore Booth sisters and stayed at Lissadell in 1893 and 1894. He immortalised Lissadell and the Gore Booth sisters in his poetry:

The light of evening, Lissadell
Great windows open to the south
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle. ...

Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.

W. B. Yeats

HARVEST HOME FOR THE NORTH WEST

21st September 2014

RIDING ARENA, LISSADELL

We are reviving the long standing tradition of a Harvest Home day in the Riding Arena at Lissadell. In past years this day was a harvest celebration for workers and tenants on the Lissadell Estate. This year it will be open to the public, and will have exhibits and stalls based on the taste of the North West.

The Sligo Independent described the scene in the Riding Arena in 1870: "along the centres of the numerous tables were placed some monster roots - consisting of mangel (average 20llbs), turnips, sweedes (15llbs)and carrots. These, together with minature ricks of hay and bunches of whitte oats, showed off the tables to perfection in an agricultural point of view". And the same newspaper reporting on the 1880 Harvest Home reported that "during the evening the amusement was varied by the singing of comic songs in which the Misses Siggins were conspicuous. Supper came at 8 o'clock consisting of roast beef and beer".

Serria potatoes in flower in the Victorian Kitchen Garden at Lissadell (right)

Serria by Pamela Cassidy

The Lissadell Langford heritage potato collection in flower

Lissadell is the proud repository of the David Langord heritage potato collection

Clockwise from the top: the Blue Danube, the Jelera, the Daisy and the Astrix, and (below) the Suncrisp

The Alpine Garden, butterflies & bees

Alpine bee white pollen baskets by Pamela Cassidy

Note the different coloured pollen baskets of these busy bees, reflecting the different pollen sources

Tortoiseshell on white by Pamela Cassidy

Alpine Garden after rain by PC

Alpine Garden by Pamela Cassidy

The Lissadell Tearooms

baking scones

Ma Baker

Salad Bar in the Lissadell Tearooms by Pamela Cassidy

Irish Hares, 7am Sunday morning

The hare is one of Ireland's longest established indigenous species of mammal.These hares have a regular morning run across the lawns by the house to the fields beyond. Today they sense that they are under scrutiny from the house. The hares share the grasslands with the butterflies (below) including the ringlet & meadow brown.

LISSADELL: NEXT TO NATURE

Poplar Hawk Moth taking the sun

Lissadell welcomed An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD to Lissadell in June 2014

Elanor & Jane have afternoon tea with Enda Kenny at Lissadell by PC

An Taoiseach takes afternoon tea (prepared by Tim Bracken) in the Ante Room at Lissadell

For a pictorial record of An Taoiseach's visit to Lissadell, click on this link: Visit by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny June 2014

Butterflies & Bees

Butterflies and moths include the couded yellow, the pearl-bordered fritillary, the hummingbird hawk moth, the small tortoiseshell, the painted lady, the peacock, the speckled wood, the red admiral (a regular visitor to the Kitchen garden) and the common blue (engaged in a mating dance)

RESTORATION WORK AT LISSADELL: A PICTORIAL RECORD

click on the image below

Roses, Lavender, Nepeta, Pumpkins, Sunflowers, Apples, Strawberries

EXHIBITIONS AT LISSADELL

THE YEATS GALLERY

OPENED BY

LEONARD COHEN

POET, NOVELIST, SINGER, SONGWRITER

On 01 August 2010

The new exhibition in the Yeats Gallery displays a definitive collection of first edition and rare books, original letters, paintings, drawings, photographs and ephemera focussing on the life and works of the poet William Butler Yeats, his brother the artist Jack, his father the portrait painter John; the artistic works of his sisters Lily and Lolly at the Cuala Press; and the works of thier literary and artistic contemporaries. The collection is both comprehensive and unique, and has been painstakingly assembled over the past five years. For more information click on YEATS above.

Leonard Cohen in the Yeats' Gallery at Lissadell

Leonard Cohen at the Yeats Gallery on 01 August, 2010

EXHIBITIONS at Lissadell include the Constance Markievicz Exhibition opened by An Taoiseach in March 2007, an exhibition of the paintings of AE (George Russell) and our natural history collection.