The 600 hectares of landscaped grounds contain a lake that is home to the UK's only nonmigratory colony of greylag geese. You can also join a tour of the grand 18th-century house .
The estate is 2.5km southeast of Enniskillen. You can easily walk there from Enniskillen town centre in 30 minutes – beyond Dunnes Stores, fork left on Tempo Rd and keep going straight along Castlecoole Rd.
When King George IV visited Ireland in 1821, the second Earl of Belmore had a state bedroom specially prepared at Castle Coole in anticipation of the monarch's visit. The king, however, was more interested in dallying with his mistress at Slane Castle and never turned up. The bedroom, draped in red silk and decorated with paintings depicting A Rake's Progress (the earl's sniffy riposte to the king's extramarital shenanigans), is one of the highlights of the one-hour guided tour.
Designed by James Wyatt, this Palladian mansion was built between 1789 and 1795 for Armar Lowry-Corry, the first Earl of Belmore, and is probably the purest expression of late-18th-century neoclassical architecture in Ireland.
It's said that if the geese ever leave, the earls of Belmore will lose Castle Coole.
