Poet Seán Ó Tuama’s family home is literally a literary gem on the hill

Tommy Barker scans the late poet Seán Ó Tuama’s family home on the outskirts of Cork city, mixing country living with city convenience, views of the Lee Fields, and a unique place in Irish literary history

POEMS, plays and dramas were written, and often performed, in this lofty Leeside bungalow at Hollymount. This was the hummingly-busy home, for over a half century, to poet and professor Seán Ó Tuama, his wife Beití, and their fist-full of family, five sons, given free-range on the edge of Cork city above the Lee Road.

“It was always fun, and mirth, and drama at Hollymount,” recalls one of the younger of the five boys of clann Ó Tuama, Eoin, a recently-retired school principal at Coláiste An Phiarsaigh in Glanmire.