Hello intrepid screenwriters! Bill Boyle and I are so excited that you’re joining us on our adventure in Ireland: Ireland Screenwriting Retreat (I should come up with a better name). 🙂 Anyway, here’s some history about the historic country house where we’ll be living.
Over several centuries, Renvyle House has been built, pulled down, rebuilt, burned to ashes and rebuilt once again. A chieftain of one of the oldest and most powerful Gaelic clans in Connacht once lived here. In the 16th century, it’s believed that Pirate Queen, Grace O’Malley, lived in Renvyle Castle, the remains of which are located just a short distance from the hotel. Cromwell ordered the castle to be demolished in the mid-17th century and a house was built on the site of the present Renvyle House.
Renvyle was at one time the home of the Blake Family, one of the fourteen tribes of Galway. Mrs. Caroline Blake first opened it as a hotel in 1883. It then became the home of poet, Statesman and surgeon Oliver St. John Gogarty (Buck Mulligan of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”) and, since becoming a country house hotel in 1883, Renvyle House has played host to many famous people – Augustus John, Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats and Winston Churchill among them. In fact the poet W.B. Yeats spent his honeymoon at Renvyle House in the Autumn of 1917. The house was burnt in the Civil War along with Gogarty’s extensive Library containing many valuable first editions. It was rebuilt in the Arts & Crafts style and reopened as a hotel once again. We’ll have exclusive use of the Renvyle House library during our stay. It’ll be our classroom and haven.
If you’re not already signed up, we have a spot for you. Click Here for info and registration.