The reason to stop at Killadeas stands in the churchyard of the Church of Ireland Priory church: the Bishop’s Stone, one of the most striking early medieval carvings in Fermanagh. It’s an odd, much-altered slab. An earlier carved head on one side resembles the famous figures across the water on White Island; later, an ecclesiastical figure carrying a bell and a crozier was cut into the western face, with the name ROBARTACH added beside it. Some read the figure as a bishop, others as a pilgrim with his staff and satchel. Either way you can walk right up to it, free, whenever the graveyard is open.
Killadeas itself is tiny – 82 people at the last count – and there’s no visitor centre or ticket desk; the stones are the attraction, and the village is really a quiet base on the eastern shore of Lower Lough Erne, about seven miles north of Enniskillen. The name comes from the Culdees (Cill Chéile Dé, ‘church of the Culdees’), a reforming monastic group whose church here, the ‘Yellow Church’, belonged to the monks of nearby Devenish.
The other stones
The Bishop’s Stone doesn’t stand alone. Just to the west is a large slab carved on one face with at least a dozen cup-shaped hollows – a prehistoric bullaun or cup-marked stone, later reused as an early Christian cross-slab: its other side bears a Greek cross in a circle, and the antiquarian Macalister recorded a worn inscription on it, BENDACHT AR ART U LURCAIN, ‘a blessing upon Art ua Lurcain’. Nearby stand a plain pillar stone and a holed stone of the kind that once drew folk rituals. The carved stones are Scheduled Historic Monuments, in Rockfield townland.
On the water
This is boating and fishing country. The Lough Erne Yacht Club is based at Killadeas, and the lough’s sheltered bays suit dinghy sailing; anglers come for the lake’s trout and pike. The RNLI runs a lifeboat station here on Lower Lough Erne, paired with its station at Carrybridge on the upper lough – it’s a working station rather than a visitor attraction, so admire it from the shore. During the Second World War the bay at Gublusk, just north, was an RAF flying-boat base, home to Short Sunderlands and Catalinas patrolling the Atlantic.
Killadeas is a stop on the Lough Erne Pilgrim Way, the marked route linking the lough’s old monastic sites, and a good launching point for the boat to White Island and its carved figures or to the round tower and ruins on Devenish Island. Watch the reed margins for the Irish damselfly, a rare insect for which these shores are a stronghold.
Practical
The village lies on the eastern-shore road north of Enniskillen, and you’ll want a car. The Manor House Country Hotel, overlooking a marina, is the main place to stay and eat; Enniskillen, ten minutes south, has the rest. The churchyard and its stones are free and open year-round. For a fuller day, pair Killadeas with Castle Archdale Country Park up the shore or the Marble Arch Caves to the south-west – but if you only add one thing, make it the boat to Devenish.