Walled Gardens, Castletown House, Monea, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, BT93 7AR

The walled gardens at Castletown House form an attractive and important part of the estate setting, contributing significantly to the character of the main house and other listed structures within the demesne.

The flower garden occupies the ground immediately east of the house. It is enclosed to the east, south and west by rubble stone walls, with a steep fall in ground level to the east and a hedge to the north dividing it from the vegetable garden. The boundary with the house features an ornate wrought iron gate with cast iron details, hung on plain masonry piers. The gate has plain dog bars beneath a frieze of quatrefoils, above which rise the main bars—half as many as the dog bars—topped with spearhead finials and spearheads between each bar. The top rail ramps up at each end, where wrought clasping bars are fitted. The flower garden is laid out in beds with gravel paths. A sundial stands in its centre, comprising a plain stone shaft with a bronze face and scrolled gnomon. The sundial is inscribed 'Dublin'.

The vegetable garden adjoins to the south, enclosed to the west and north by stone walls, with the steep ground fall to the east and the flower garden hedge to the south. The northern boundary wall is in a state of collapse and has several very ruinous abutting buildings. A small derelict garden house stands to the east of the vegetable garden's centre. It is a single-storey, two-bay, roughly square structure, now roofless, though it presumably had a hipped roof as there are no gables. The building is constructed in rubble stone with brick dressings and overhanging dressed stone eaves. Its east elevation contains a doorway on the left and a 6/6 sash window on the right (now unglazed). The north and west walls are blank. The south elevation has two 6/6 sash windows.

The gardens form part of an estate with a long and documented history. Monea Castle, a plantation structure dating from 1619 and one of the most intact of its type in Ulster, stands nearby with its garden and tree-lined avenue now forming scheduled monuments. The castle burnt down in 1750, after which Monea Cottage was erected on the site of the current house. The Manor of Monea was purchased in 1790 by Mr J. Brien of Stralongford, County Tyrone. Upon his death in 1811, it passed to his fourth son, Captain John Brien (born 1776). An old schoolhouse on the estate carries a datestone of 1802 inscribed 'Lieutenant J. Brien'. Captain John Brien married Charlotte Dawson in 1814, and their son John Dawson Brien was born in 1815, inheriting the estate in 1856. Around 1860, John Dawson Brien built two gate lodges, one to the west and one to the north. In 1869, having become High Sheriff and Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Fermanagh, he built the current main house (completed circa 1870). The walled gardens visible today date from this period, circa 1860–1879. John Dawson Brien died in 1881, and his widow, Francis, had the local Church of Ireland church (St. Molaise) rebuilt in his memory, with the rebuilding completed in 1890. Mrs Brien lived in the house until her death in 1917. The estate has remained in continuous ownership by the Brien family since its purchase in 1790, passing through various family members and surviving the losses of two eldest sons in the First World War. The house passed to the present owner circa 1974 following the death of a family member who had occupied it until that time.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map shows the gardens and their buildings to the immediate east of the house complex. The second edition map indicates that further outbuildings had been added to the north of the house and that the farm yard had become more defined. Pieces of masonry frieze and cornice that now cope the wall of the west drive and the wall of the flower garden may have been salvaged from the demolished wings of the earlier Monea Cottage when the present house was erected.