Portora Castle
Portora Castle is a ruined seventeenth-century castle in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, standing on a promontory above the lower reaches of the Erne where the river leaves Upper Lough Erne and enters Lower Lough Erne, commanding the waterway that was central to the military and commercial geography of medieval and early modern Fermanagh. The castle was built in the early seventeenth century as a plantation-era fortification to control this strategic waterway crossing. The castle's prominence was later overshadowed by the adjacent Portora Royal School, one of the oldest schools in Ireland, whose alumni include Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett, two of the greatest writers in the English language. The castle ruins stand in the school grounds overlooking the Erne.