NOBEL laureate Seamus Heaney was the honoured guest yesterday at the opening of a new cultural heritage centre in his hometown of Bellaghy, Co Derry, proving that poets, whatever about prophets, can be honoured in their own place.

Bellaghy Bawn has been transformed from a 17th century Jacobean stronghold, designed to protect planters from the natives, into a centre which pays homage to the history, nature, archaeology and literature of this mid Ulster area.

The Bawn, restored at a cost of £500,000 by the Department of the Environment in the North, is now open to planter and native alike. The centre features an exhibition dedicated to the poet's work, a "mini museum", and displays about the local environment, history and heritage.

The poet, even though he had never entered the building until the restoration plan was in train, had fond memories of the Bawn, which was officially opened by the North's Environment minister, Mr Malcolm Moss.

Dr Heaney explained how the Bawn was also "a special place" in that it was tangentially inspirational for one of his most famous and early poems, Digging - "about moving from a way of life and background that could be symbolised by the spade, to a way of life that might be symbolised by the pen".

He said the idea for the poem came to him late one night coming home from a dance as he was changing gear at the bend in the road beside the Bawn at Bellaghy. "In that very second, as I experienced a change of gear in my body, my mind was snatching at the idea of poetry as a change in my own way of life," Dr Heaney explained.