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seasonal · Saturday 27 June 2026 · 10:15am - 12:15pm 
Lady Dorothy Lowry-Corry Talk at Castle Coole
At Castle Coole · Castle Coole, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh
At Castle Coole · Castle Coole, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh
A morning at Castle Coole is worth the trip on its own - but this June event gives you a reason beyond the mansion’s famously cold grandeur. Enniskillen Castle is hosting a talk on Lady Dorothy Lowry-Corry (1885-1967), a woman who was born in this very house and went on to become one of Ireland’s most tenacious field archaeologists. If you have any interest in Fermanagh’s deep history, in early Christian monuments, or in women who quietly got on with serious scholarly work long before it was fashionable, this is a morning well spent. The format - talk, then a guided tour of the house, then tea - means you leave feeling you have actually learned something and seen something.
Dr Kieran O’Conor from the University of Galway delivers the lecture. He frames Dorothy Lowry-Corry as an “indefatigable field-worker” - a fair description of someone who recorded the mysterious stone figures on Boa Island and Lustymore Island, discovered the Corracloona Court Tomb in Co. Leitrim, and wrote papers for both the Royal Irish Academy and the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, all while serving as vice-president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.
What makes the setting particularly apt is that Dorothy was born at Castle Coole as the second youngest child of the 4th Earl of Belmore. The same neo-classical rooms you tour afterwards were the backdrop to her early life before she turned to the prehistoric monuments and medieval churches scattered across the county she grew up in.
After the talk, a guide takes you through the mansion’s exceptional interiors - ornate plaster ceilings, scagliola columns, and period furnishings that have changed little since the house was completed in 1798. Tea and coffee are included, which rounds off the two hours comfortably.
Castle Coole sits on the edge of Enniskillen, roughly a mile and a half south-east of the town centre, within a 1,200-acre wooded estate. If you are driving from Dublin, take the N3 / A3 via Cavan and Clones; from Belfast, the A4 brings you direct into Enniskillen. There is parking on site. Bus Eireann and Translink run services into Enniskillen town; from there the estate is a short taxi or brisk walk along the Dublin Road.
The town itself sits between the two sections of Lough Erne, and the old town centre and Enniskillen Castle - which houses the museum that organised this event - are worth an hour of your time before or after the morning session. There is more to see in Enniskillen and across Co. Fermanagh.
Heading to Castle Coole in Enniskillen? Fermanagh has plenty more to see. Read the Enniskillen area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.