Castle Saunderson
This was one of those finds that happen when your driving down a road and spot a castle in the distance which you have to go and investigate. We found the entrance to the Demesne behind an old garage and then drove up the lane as far as it would take us.
The Saunderson family acquired the original castle during the Ulster plantation. The original castle was inhabited by the O'Reillys of Breffni and formerly known as Breffni Castle since the 14th century. The present castle dates from the 1840s. A notable member of the family born there was Edward Saunderson, a founder of the Ulster Unionist Party.
Captain Alexander Saunderson sold the Castle in 1977 to a businessman, who planned to use it as a residence, but this never transpired. It later served as a hotel but was damaged by fire, the third fire to occur at the Castle. The Saunderson Castle estate, currently only 103 acres (42 ha), has an entrance in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. These grounds include a church and the family graveyard.
In 1997, the castle was acquired by Scouting Ireland.
The ceiling and panelling looked very grandeur even tho it was rotten in many places.
You can still see alot of the burnt timbers from the fire which happened during the 1990’s
These are from my visit back in 2008, and since then a lot of the grounds have been reused for camping and leisure by the scouts of Ireland. The inside of the castle is no longer accessible and even when I visited it the floors were very unstable back then.
Since these have been taken the church has been restored, or at least cleaned up inside.
