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LISBELLAW

CO. FERMANAGH · IE

Lisbellaw
Lios Béal Átha, Co. Fermanagh

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 06 / 06

Lios Béal Átha · Co. Fermanagh

The A4 passes through it. The bus stops. Most people don't.

Lisbellaw is a village the A4 passes through. There is a steep main street, a Church of Ireland that sits high above the houses, a scatter of homes and farms, and a pub that has, somewhat improbably, been named the best in Northern Ireland. Two years running.

The village's name tells you something. Lios Béal Átha - the fort at the ford-mouth - speaks to a time when the crossing of a river mattered enough to build a stronghold beside it. That fort is gone. The name persisted through the Plantation, through the linen-weaving era, through the years when every house had a spinning wheel. What persists now is quieter: the church on the hill, the GAA club training on winter evenings, the farms that have been in the same families for generations.

Do not arrive expecting entertainment. Arrive willing to look at what is here. A pub that was opened by a former pharmacist and her husband who came back to Fermanagh with a plan to make whiskey. A hurling club that has kept alive a sport that, were it not for Lisbellaw, would have no senior foothold in the whole county. A road between two towns that most people drive in twelve minutes and never think about again.

Population

1,085

Pubs

1and counting

Coords

54.3302° N, 7.4897° W

01 / 06

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The road between

Exactly halfway between Enniskillen and Lisnaskea.

Lisbellaw sits almost dead centre on the A4, five miles east of Enniskillen and five miles short of Lisnaskea. It has always been a through-place, and it is not troubled by that. The farmland runs flat and damp on both sides of the road.

Getting here → 02 The plain

Good land, working farms, no drama.

This is the agricultural heartland of central Fermanagh - cattle country, with silage bales in the fields and tractors on the road on a Tuesday morning. Samuel Lewis noted in 1837 that the inhabitants wove linen and plaited mats from bulrushes. The tractors are more comfortable now.

Stories & lore → 03 The hurlers

The only senior hurling club left in all of Fermanagh.

Lisbellaw St Patrick's carries an entire county on its back. They are the sole adult hurling club in Fermanagh, and they have been county champions thirty-one times. In 2021, they supplied most of the county panel that won the Lory Meagher Cup. A small place doing a big thing.

Stories & lore →

02 / 06

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

The Dog & Duck Inn and Glenwinny Distillery

Independent beers, dog-friendly, serious about what is on tap

Craft pub and micro-distillery

CAMRA Northern Ireland Pub of the Year 2024 and 2025. Fourteen guest taps including cask ale and real ciders, with locally brewed ales from Inishmacsaint, Rough Brothers, and others alongside their own house ales. The Glenwinny micro-distillery behind the bar produces small-batch whiskey, rum and brandy. Opened June 2022 by Margaret Elliott-Tredinnick - a pharmacist from Enniskillen who went to university in Bath, spent twenty years in Bristol, and came home to make whiskey. The pub is named for the sprocker spaniel.

03 / 06

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

What the name carries

The ford-mouth fort

Lios Béal Átha translates as the ringfort at the mouth of the ford - a fortified crossing-point on a river that once mattered to whoever was moving livestock or soldiers through central Fermanagh. The fort is long gone, absorbed into the farmland around the village. But the name survived the Plantation, survived the anglicisation of almost everything else, and sits on the road sign in Irish above the English. Most people drive past it at sixty miles an hour.

Lisbellaw St Patrick's GAA

The only hurlers in Fermanagh

In 1968, Adrian Corrigan and Father Peter McGuinness gathered players from the Lisbellaw area and started a hurling club. It became Lisbellaw St Patrick's, and it is now the only adult hurling club in Fermanagh - the last club in the county playing the oldest field game in Ireland. They have won the Fermanagh Senior Hurling Championship thirty-one times and the Ulster Intermediate title in 2012. In 2021 they supplied the backbone of the Fermanagh county panel that won the Lory Meagher Cup - the inter-county competition for Ulster's smaller hurling counties. Sean Corrigan, a Lisbellaw man, scored 2-20 from play across that campaign and was named Player of the Year.

Glenwinny Distillery

The pharmacist who came home

Margaret Elliott-Tredinnick grew up near Enniskillen, went south to university in Bath, met her husband John, and spent two decades in Bristol. They developed an interest in distilling. In late 2020 they came back, set up the Glenwinny micro-distillery in Lisbellaw, and reopened the village pub as the Dog & Duck Inn in June 2022. The whiskey is made in small batches from locally sourced ingredients. The pub won CAMRA's Northern Ireland Pub of the Year in 2024, then again in 2025. A village of 1,085 people on the A4 now has one of the best-regarded pubs on the island.

Williamite War, 1689

The battle on the hill

Local tradition holds that on a hill above the village, a skirmish was fought between Williamite and Jacobite troops during the war of 1689-1691. Fermanagh was Protestant Williamite territory throughout that conflict - the 'Enniskilleners', as they were known, were aggressive cavalry and infantry who harassed Jacobite supply lines across Ulster. The most significant engagement in the area was the Battle of Newtownbutler, ten miles south, in July 1689, when Jacobite forces were decisively routed. The Lisbellaw fight is a smaller footnote in the same campaign.

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The GAA season starts. The countryside goes green quickly. The pub is quieter and easier to get a seat.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings. The Dog & Duck fills up but does not overcrowd. Good base for the Fermanagh lakelands if you are driving.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

County championship hurling. The light is low and good. No reason not to come.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

The pub stays open. There is not much else. If that is enough for you, then it is enough.

◐ Mind yourself

05 / 06

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Treating it as a drive-through to Enniskillen

Everyone does this. You could stop for an hour, walk the main street, visit a pub that has beaten every other pub in Northern Ireland, and leave knowing something. Most people do not.

Coming without a car

The Ulsterbus 95 does stop here, and it will get you to Enniskillen or Lisnaskea. But the village sits in farming country and the nearest lough shore is a drive away. You need wheels to make the most of the area.

Looking for a food scene

The Dog & Duck does food - good food, locally sourced. That is what there is. Do not arrive expecting a restaurant quarter. There is not one.

Getting there.

By car

On the A4 between Enniskillen (8 km west) and Lisnaskea (10 km east). From Belfast, the A4 runs the whole way via Dungannon and Enniskillen - about 2 hours.

By bus

Ulsterbus 95 runs Enniskillen-Lisbellaw-Maguiresbridge-Lisnaskea-Newtownbutler-Clones. Regular daily service. Enniskillen to Lisbellaw is around 20 minutes.