Historic Sites in County Fermanagh

Most of what this list covers sits in the limestone country west and south of Enniskillen, in the ground around Cuilcagh. Florence Court, eight miles from the town, is the one with a roof on it: an 18th-century National Trust house rebuilt after a 1955 fire, with Rococo plasterwork inside and, out in the demesne, the yew found on the mountain in 1767 that is ancestor to almost every Irish yew in the world. Killesher lies below the same mountain, where the Cuilcagh Boardwalk Trail, the ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ends in a long flight of wooden steps; its post-Famine church and scatter of megalithic tombs make the quieter half of a visit.

The prehistoric sites ask more of you. Aghanaglack’s dual-court tomb, two burial courts sharing a common backstone, sits in a clearing in Ballintempo Forest at the end of a moderate 7-mile loop through bog, limestone grassland and conifer. The Reyfad Stones near Boho are cup-and-ring carvings on weathered outcrops in a field with no signage and no facilities.

Water decides two of the rest. Inishmacsaint, with its plain four-metre high cross and 12th-century church ruins, can be reached only by boat from Enniskillen or Killadeas. Caldragh Cemetery on Boa Island is free and open year-round, though the ground is uneven with no formal paths. Slieve Rushen, above Bawnboy on the Cavan border, is the outlier: a 404-metre bog walk with cairns, quarry remains and a working wind farm on top.