Annaghmakerrig

It's a magical place overlooking a lake near Newbliss, County Monaghan. It was the ancestral home of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, the theatre and opera director who ran the Old Vic, founded  the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and brought excitement everywhere he worked. “He bestrode world theatre like a colossus,” wrote the actor, Sir Ian McKellen.  “And he looked like one, even at our damp, autumn rehearsals. Six-feet-three in his galoshes, muffling up a serious cold, hugging himself in an ankle-length tweed overcoat, then stretching out his long arms as he spoke, radiating energy like a sun.”
Guthrie died at Annaghmakerrig, his family home. He willed the house to the Irish state on condition that it should become an artists’ retreat and that artists in residence here should dine together every evening. 
There is no place like it. It is hard to convey in words the atmosphere of creativity, conviviality, mutual trust; the big house on the lake, the gardens, the forest, the silence broken only by birdsong, and at night, laughter and sometimes music, song, poetry, readings from work in progress. 
There are studios for visual artists and a room for composers. 
The house is filled with beautiful things, some of them – porcelain, the drawing room and library furniture, books, sculptures, prints – bequeathed with the house, others the work of artists who have stayed here. Magnificent paintings, sculptures, wood carvings, prints, tapestries. 
I've stayed in most of the rooms at one time or another. One of my favourites is the Butler Room, named for Hubert Butler, the Irish essayist, promoter of Catholic/Protestant reconciliation, who was married to Tyrone Guthrie’s sister, Margaret. The room overlooks the lake. The light is constantly changing. It is particularly beautiful at dusk.

Spring at Annaghmakerrig.
Primroses, violets, white horse in field.
Wood sorrel, celandine, wind in the trees.