October 4-13, 2025
The Arts and Crafts Movement included a number of artists and craftworkers who lived and worked in Ireland as well as several who came over from England. But perhaps its greatest influence was the Celtic Revival. On this tour we will of course see many examples of glorious Irish Arts and Crafts such as windows by Harry Clarke, but we will also spend time visiting and studying the origins of this work – such as those of the Celtic Revival.
The Celtic Revival, sometimes referred to as the ‘Celtic Twilight’ was a variety of movements in the 19th, and 20th centuries that spawned renewed interest in many aspects of Celtic culture. Poets and playwrights drew on the traditions of Gaelic and Welsh literature. Artists, stone-carvers and architects were inspired by the insular styles used in the Iron Age and early medieval period in Britain and Ireland. Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields, and in various countries in Northwest Europe, its best-known manifestations are the interlaced art style, and the Irish Literary Revival. Irish writers including WB Yeats and Lady Gregory stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature, folklore, and Irish poetry. One widespread result of the Celtic Revival was the introduction of the design of medieval Irish High Crosses, as a form for monumental and funerary art.
A growing sense of Celtic identity encouraged a rise in nationalism in the United Kingdom and this was especially intense in Ireland. The Celtic Revival provided the driving force that powered Ireland’s transition from being a cultural, economic, and political backwater of England, into becoming a thriving fully independent European nation and culture in its own right.
We begin with two nights in Dublin and from here we will take in Pagan and Early Christian wonders in the National Museum and Trinity College Library, such as the Ardagh Chalice, and the Book of Kells. We will also visit the National Museum and the WB Yeats Exhibition in the National Library. We will go to the Glasnevin Cemetery, and to Edwin Lutyens Memorial Gardens. And we visit the Tynan High Cross and Emain Mach in Armagh.
We then head south and en route to Cork we will visit Lutyen’s Heywood Gardens. In Kilkenny we will see the Hiberno Norman Cathedral; the New Butler Art Gallery; and Talbot’s Inch, an Arts and Crafts model village. Up on the Rock of Cashel we will see the Hiberno-Romanesque Cormac’s Chapel. In Cork City we will see William Burgess’s masterpiece, St Finbarr’s Cathedral, as well as the Honan Chapel. The Honan is the product of perhaps the greatest creative group collaboration of Celtic Revival, and Arts and Crafts, architects, sculptors and stained glass makers, mosaic artists, furnishing and furniture makers in Irish art history.
Our journey to Galway, not only offers us an opportunity to relish the glorious Irish countryside and water’s edge, but enables us to see William Godwin’s never completed Dromore Castle; the fabulous door of Clonfert Cathedral; the High Crosses at Clonmacnoise; the round tower at Kilmacduagh, a uniquely Irish architectural form – Yeat’s tower at Thoor Ballylee, as well as the Harry Clarke windows and other important items in Loughrea Cathedral.
The end of our tour will be two nights in Dun Laoghaire with views from our hotel over the bay to Dublin. Here are some hidden gems such as the windows in the Blackrock Church and the murals in Sister Concepta Lynch’s, Oratory. And we take a boat trip out to Lambay Island to see Lambay Castle, Lutyens Irish masterpiece. There are other sites to visit including a most spectacular private collection of Arts & Crafts furniture and art.