Belle Isle

Belle Isle Castle stands on a 470-acre Fermanagh island where Sir Ralph Gore first built a home around 1700, later transformed by General Ross into a sprawling garden estate reaching the Lough Erne shore. After passing through Hardinge and Porter hands for nearly two centuries, the 5th Duke of Abercorn bought it in 1991 for his son Nicholas, converting the old coach houses and cottages into guest rooms beside the grand banquet hall. Today pine martens hunt the grounds again, grey squirrels dart between floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the eighteenth-century gardens, and visitors still walk the same paths where Ross added his tower and Wright shaped the land.