Castle Balfour
It was my first time in county Fermanagh and I really didn’t know what to expect. I do know that that area was a bit of lakeland, so I was hoping to get some nice photos of the lakeviews. Enniskillen was a nice base to start from. It turns out that Enniskillen already has a castle and it seems to be one of those fairy tale type of castles with conical towers. What I didn’t know was that Enniskillen Castle was one of several plantation castles in the area. So what exactly is a plantation castle?
The Ruins of Castle Balfour
Back then when England was in the process of taking over Ireland. There were large parts of the country which were to be occupied by the English. It would be difficult to just a a fortress in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by hostile natives. The solution was to move people from England to these sites. The term used for these places is called a plantation. It is actually a plantation of people, planting them in these areas in the hope that they will multiply and outnumber the native Irish. These plantations would usually have castles to house officials, one of these plantation castles is Enniskillen Castle. Apparently, there are a few plantation castles within this area and I thought that I should try to visit these castles since I was already here. The next one on the list is Castle Balfour in Lisnaskea, not too far away from Enniskillen itself.
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