A "glaring new house" built less than 100 metres from Yeats's tower, Thoor Ballylee, in south Galway would represent an "appalling intrusion" on the landscape, the poet's biographer, Prof Roy Foster, told a Bord Pleanála appeal in Galway yesterday.
The heritage site, which had been carefully conserved by local people after Yeats's death, deserved better than such an "eyesore development", Prof Foster, who works at Oxford University, contended.
He was one of the objectors to Galway County Council's planning approval for a private dwelling near the tower. A former US presidential candidate, Mr Gary Hart, was one of many former visitors to Thoor Ballylee who had registered his strong objections to any such development, he added.
However, the applicant, Mr Paddy Fahy, told the hearing that the proposed bungalow was for his eldest son, who was due to take over the family farm. It was the only area on his land which was not subject to flooding, and if any other site could have been found he would have been delighted to build there. The planning permission includes an enurement clause which prevents the house from being sold to anyone not closely associated with farming in the area.
The one-day oral hearing chaired by a senior planning inspector, Mr Dermot Kelly, was requested by a California-based Yeats scholar, Ms Linda Satchwell, after Galway County Council granted permission in October 2002 for construction of a single-storey dwelling house on private land adjoining the tower,where the poet once lived and worked. Both Ms Satchwell and Ireland-West Tourism had objected to the original planning application.
Ms Satchwell subsequently lodged an appeal last November, which was supported by Prof Foster. Observers also objecting to the development include An Taisce's Galway Branch and the Irish Georgian Society.
Long before Yeats came to live there, he saw Ballylee as a "visionary landscape," both in terms of the Elizabethan tower built by the De Burgos and the locality, Prof Foster said. From 1919, it was to inspire some of his greatest poetry, including A Prayer for My Daughter and The Tower, the title poem of a collection published in 1928.
One of his poems had warned against despoiling the house which he had restored: "God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage ... and should some limb of the devil Destroy the view by cutting down an ash That shades the road, or setting up a cottage Planned in a government office, shorten his life, Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom."
Local people had done much to restore the building and the area after Yeats's death, and its integrity, and that of the surrounding landscape, must be preserved in cultural and historical terms, Prof Foster said.
Mr Paul Keogh, of Paul Keogh Architectural Services, who represented Ms Satchwell, said the structure was a national monument and a proposed protected structure in Galway's draft county development plan. He questioned the validity of the planning application, and noted there was no evidence of a report by a conservation officer, nor was there any report from Dúchas, the Heritage Service - other than a covering letter sent to Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, Mr Noel Treacy TD, stating it had "no archaeological objection" to the development.
The council defended its decision to grant approval, and stated that it was a valid application.
No final report was on file, partly due to a shortage of staff at the time of the decision, and there was no record of the council referring the application to Dúchas.
The inspector, Mr Kelly, questioned discrepancies in the estimated distance from the proposed dwelling to the tower, and also asked the local authority why Dúchas had not been asked to look at the conservation aspect of the development.
The applicant, Mr Fahy, said he had been farming for 50 years, having left school at 15, and had five in his family.
His eldest son, David, was keen to return from England to take over the farm.
He had seen the height of flooding in the area in 1995, and knew that most of his land was very exposed to flooding.