There are two pubs and a couple of shops in Bellaghy, County Derry, a small village in the rural heart of mid-Ulster. To many people, it is an ordinary place, and yet something extraordinary has just happened. A former RUC police station has been restored and turned into a contemporary arts and literary centre, with fans flying in from all directions to celebrate the life of Bellaghy’s local son and national hero – the late Seamus Heaney. Given the full blessing of the Heaney family, the first thing that strikes you as you walk into Seamus Heaney HomePlace is a 4.5m-high, black-and-white photo of Heaney, along with the words from his most celebrated poem, Digging, which closes with:
“Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.”
The centre covers two floors – with a theatre at its heart. The ground floor is dedicated to the poet’s life and family, and photographs (donated by the family) are displayed with poems to match them, such as A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann, his daughter, A Kite for Michael and Christopher, dedicated to his sons, and Mossbawn for his aunt Mary.
There are video tributes from fans, the likes of Stephen Fry and Mary Robinson, talking about the power of Heaney’s work, along with local schoolchildren talking about the influence the man has had on them. And then, of course, there is footage of Heaney, including a rousing rendition – from an RTÉ interview in 1995 – of When all the others were away at Mass, written after his mother died, and which was, in 2015, voted as Ireland’s best-loved poem of the last 100 years.
There is no better way to discover the “everyday” landscapes that inspired much of Heaney’s poetry than with Eugene Kielt, who not only runs the elegant Laurel Villa guesthouse (rooms from £40, guided tour from £12pp) in Magherafelt, just five miles from Bellaghy, but is also a Blue Badge Guide specialising in Heaney country. The countryside here is ordinary, flat and bog-filled, the Sperrin Mountains to the west and Lough Neagh to the south east, but Heaney found beauty in the ordinary.
And now Eugene helps visitors see the unremarkable surroundings through Heaney’s eyes, sometimes reading poems aloud from his well-leafed books, other times playing a reading by the man himself. Such as in the small town of Castledawson, where we sheltered from the rain under trees in a churchyard, overlooking an empty field in the grounds of the adjoining Moyola Park house. We were unable to enter the grounds, however, because these days it is private property. In Heaney’s youth, its then owner, Unionist Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark, had allowed footballers to play there – and it features in Heaney’s poem, The Old Team.
Nearby, the river Moyola runs through the town. When I hear Heaney’s voice narrating from A New Song I’m reminded to look up and out, to take in the alder trees, inhale the aroma of the mossy banks and listen to the slow-flowing waters pass:
“And stepping stones like black molars
Sunk in the fjord, the shifty glaze
Of the whirlpool, the Moyola
Pleasuring beneath alder trees.”
From Castledawson I go to The Wood, a farm where Heaney lived when he was a teenager, and where his brother Hugh still resides. A small homestead, with washing hanging on the line and a pristine yard, I had a chance meeting with Hugh, who gave us a warm welcome, taking time to talk about the loss of Seamus and also his skill as a poet. “I think my favourite poem is probably Keeping Going,” he said. “He dedicated that one to me. It’s wonderful, but it’s sad, of course.”
“My dear brother, you have good stamina
You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor
Pulls up at the Diamond, you wave at people,
You shout and laugh about the revs, you keep
old roads open by driving on the new ones.”
We visit the poet’s grave at St Mary’s Church in Bellaghy. In a sheltered corner, beside an old stone wall, with a plain headstone made of Kilkenny limestone mottled by raindrops, it is unassuming, modest, engraved with a few words: “Walk on air against your better judgement,” from his poem The Gravel Walks.
Back in Laurel Villa, I am able to absorb even more Heaney perusing Eugene and his wife Gerardine’s well-stocked library. There are four en suite bedrooms, each dedicated to an Ulster poet: Kavanagh, McNiece, Longley and Heaney, decorated with fine linen, local art pieces, mahogany wardrobes and, of course, books. Breakfast is not only a delicious start to the day but also an artistic one, the walls bedecked with 10 limited-edition linen scrolls with a Heaney poem on each, created by Queen’s University Belfast after he received the Nobel prize for literature.
My final stop in his country is at dawn, in a misty field overlooking Lough Beg, a nearby nature reserve and site of Heaney’s famous The Strand at Lough Beg. One of his more political poems, it also captures the peace that now, thankfully, emanates across his homeland, where:
“Across that strand of ours the cattle graze
Up to their bellies in an early mist
And now they turn their unbewildered gaze
To where we work our way through squeaking sedge
Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge
Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.”
• The trip was provided by Discover Northern Ireland, discovernorthernireland.com. Seamus Heaney HomePlace, 45 Main Street, Bellaghy,, 028 7938 7444. Admission: £7 adults, £4.50 children aged eight and over, children aged seven and under free, £19 family ticket. Open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1pm-5pm. For more information on Lough Beg national nature reserve, see daera-ni.gov.uk. To travel to Bellaghy and Magherafelt fly to Belfast or Derry.
