Parke's Castle

A restored fortified manor house on the shore of Lough Gill, built in the early seventeenth century by an English planter within the bawn of an earlier O'Rourke tower house. The reconstructed timber and stone buildings enclose a courtyard entered through a gatehouse, illustrating plantation-era domestic defence. It overlooks the wooded lake celebrated in the poetry of Yeats. Boat trips on the lough depart from beside the castle, and the interior displays craftwork and furnishings evoking the settler household of the period.