Preface - Enniskillen - The Island Town
Enniskillen is the county town of Fermanagh; a county created in the English fashion from the area ruled by the Irish clan, the Maguires. In landscape its origin takes us back to the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago and as the ice melted and glaciers slid towards the ocean they carved out two large lakes in County Fermanagh now known as Upper and Lower Lough Erne. The glaciers left a landscape of little hills behind them known as drumlins - the look like little half egg shapes - and there are thousands of these all over Fermanagh; indeed Enniskillen is built on one of these drumlins The River Erne has a cathment area of about a million acres and flows from near Ballyjamesduff in County Cavan to the Atlantic Ocean at Ballyshannon, County Donegal, a distance of about 70 miles. It is the third largest river system in Ireland. In the past the Erne was greatly given to flooding so much that it was said that in the Summer, Lough Erne was in Fermanagh and in the Winter, Fermanagh was in Lough Erne. All that changed in the 1880s when the Erne was lowered by about three metres in a major drainage scheme. The lakes got smaller and its iislands including Enniskilen Island got larger.
