Lough Neagh Loch nEathach
NASA Landsat image, with district overlay in red
Location	Northern Ireland
Coordinates	54°37′06″N 6°23′43″W / 54.61833°N 6.39528°W / 54.61833; -6.39528Coordinates: 54°37′06″N 6°23′43″W / 54.61833°N 6.39528°W / 54.61833; -6.39528
Primary inflows	Upper Bann, Sixmilewater, Glenavy River, Crumlin River, Blackwater, Moyola River, Ballinderry River, River Main[1]
Primary outflows	Bann River
Catchment area	4550 km²
Basin countries	United Kingdom (91%) Republic of Ireland (9%)
Max. length	30 km
Max. width	15 km
Surface area	392 km²
Average depth	9 m
Max. depth	25 m
Water volume	3.528 km³
Islands	(see below)

Lough Neagh, sometimes Loch Neagh,^[2] (/ˌlɒx ˈneɪ/) is a large freshwater lake in Northern Ireland. Its name comes from Irish: Loch nEathach, meaning "Lake of Eathach" (Irish: [ɫ̪ɔx ˈn̠ʲahax]).^[3]

Geography[link]

With an area of 392 square kilometres (151 sq mi), it is the largest lake in the British Isles^[4][5] and is ranked 31st in the List of largest lakes of Europe. Located twenty miles (30 km) to the west of Belfast, it is approximately twenty miles (30 km) long and nine miles (15 km) wide. It is very shallow around the margins and the average depth in the main body of the lake is about 9 m (30 ft); although at its deepest the lough is about 25 metres (80 ft) deep.

Islands[link]

• Coney Island
• Coney Island Flat
• Croaghan Flat
• Derrywarragh Island
• Padian
• Ram's Island
• Phil Roe's Flat
• The Shallow Flat

Hydrology[link]

Of the 4550 km² catchment area, around 9% lies in the Republic of Ireland and 91% in Northern Ireland;^[6] altogether 43% of the land area of Northern Ireland is drained into the lough,^[7] which itself flows out northwards to the sea via the River Bann. As one of its sources is the Upper Bann, the Lough can itself be considered a part of the Bann.

Towns and villages[link]

Towns and villages near the Lough include Craigavon, Antrim, Crumlin, Randalstown, Toomebridge, Ballyronan, Ballinderry, Moortown, Ardboe, Maghery, Lurgan and Magherafelt.

Administration[link]

Counties of Northern Ireland

Districts of Northern Ireland

Counties[link]

Five of the six counties of Northern Ireland have shores on the Lough (only Fermanagh does not), and its area is split among them. The counties are listed clockwise:

1. Antrim (eastern half of the lake)
2. Down (small part in the southeast)
3. Armagh (south)
4. Tyrone (west)
5. Londonderry (extreme northwest)

Local Government Districts[link]

The area of the lake is split between six Local Government Districts of Northern Ireland, which are listed clockwise: ^[8]

• 1 Antrim, in the northeast, with the largest share
• 19 Lisburn City, in the east, with the smallest share
• 12 Craivagon, in the south, with a larger share
• 15 Dungannon and South Tyrone, in the southwest, with a smaller share
• 11 Cookstown, in the west, with a larger share
• 20 Magherafelt, in the northwest, with a smaller share

Uses[link]

Although the Lough is used for a variety of recreational and commercial activities, it is exposed and tends to get extremely rough very quickly in windy conditions. It is also used as a source of fresh water by Northern Ireland Water. Plans to increase the amount of water drawn from the Lough, through a new water treatment works at Hog Park Point, have long been planned but are yet to materialise.

Traditional working boats on Lough Neagh include wide-beamed 16-to-21-foot (4.9 to 6.4 m) clinker-built, sprit-rigged working boats and smaller flat-bottomed "cots" and "flats". Barges, here called "lighters", were used up to the 1940s to transport coal over the lough and adjacent canals. Up to the 17th century, log boats (coití) were the main means of transport, some of which are as old as 6,400 years. Few traditional boats are left now, but a community-based group on the southern shore of the lough is rebuilding a series of working boats.^[9]

In the 19th century, three canals were constructed, making use of the lough to link various ports and cities: the Lagan Navigation provided a link from the city of Belfast, the Newry Canal linked to the port of Newry, and the Ulster Canal led to the Lough Erne navigations, providing a navigable inland route via the River Shannon to Limerick, Dublin and Waterford. The Lower Bann was also navigable to Coleraine and the Antrim coast, and the short Coalisland Canal provided a route for coal transportation. Of these waterways, only the Lower Bann remains open today, although a restoration plan for the Ulster Canal is currently in progress.

Lough Neagh Rescue provides a Search & Rescue service twenty-four hours a day. It is a voluntary service with funding being provided by the District Councils bordering the Lough, its members are highly trained and are a declared facility for the Marine Coastguard Agency who co-ordinate rescues on Lough Neagh Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

Lough Neagh attracts bird watchers from many nations due to the number and variety of birds which winter and summer in the boglands and shores around the lough.

Eel fishing has been a major industry in Lough Neagh for centuries. Today Lough Neagh eel fisheries export their eels to restaurants all over the world and Lough Neagh Eel has been granted Protected Geographical Status under European Union law.^[10]

Lough Neagh was widely assumed to be owned by the state, but in 2005 it publicly emerged that it is the ancestral property of the Earl of Shaftesbury. This may have serious implications for planned changes to state-run domestic water services in Northern Ireland, as the lough supplies 40% of the region's drinking water and is also used as a sewage outfall (in a system only permissible through British Crown immunity).^[11]

Legend[link]

An old Irish story tells how the Lough was formed when Ireland's legendary giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) scooped up a portion of the land and tossed it at a Scottish rival. He missed, and the chunk of earth landed in the Irish Sea, thus creating the Isle of Man.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Lough Neagh at Killywoolaghan, County Tyrone

• 

  Lough Neagh near Ardmore Point

• 

  Lough Neagh at Shane's Castle, County Antrim

• 

  Lough Neagh at Gawley's Gate, County Antrim

• 

  Lough Neagh at Maghery, County Armagh

• 

  Lough Neagh at Ballyronan, County Londonderry

See also[link]

• List of loughs in Ireland
• Lough Beg
• Portmore Lough
• Traad Point
• Oxford Island

References[link]

External links[link]

• Discover Lough Neagh
• Lough Neagh Rescue
• Lough Neagh Boating Heritage Association
• BBC News on pollution
• BBC News on ownership of Lough Neagh
• Oxford Island National Nature Reserve

Joe Devlin

Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, (13 February 1871 – 18 January 1934) was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and later a Nationalist Party MP in the Parliament of Northern Ireland.

Early years[link]

Born at 10 Hamill Street, in the Lower Falls area of Belfast, he was the fifth child of Charles Devlin (d. 1906) who ran a hackney cab, and his wife Eliza King (d. 1902) who sold groceries from their home. Until he was twelve he attended the nearby St. Mary's Christian Brothers School in Divis Street, where he was educated in a more ‘national’ and ‘catholic’ view of Irish history and culture than offered in the state system.

He showed an early gift for public speaking when he became chairman of a debating society founded in 1886 to commemorate the first nationalist election victory in West Belfast. From 1891-1893 he was journalist on the Irish News than on the Freeman's Journal when he became associated with the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) which he helped to re-establish in 1890s becoming spokesman for the Catholic population and a lifelong opponent of its counterpart, the Orange Order. He then worked at Samuel Young MP's brewery for whom he managed a Belfast pub, which sustained him until 1902.^[1]

Skilled politician[link]

During the 1890s he was active as organizer in the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation in eastern Ulster. When William O’Brien founded the United Irish League (UIL) in County Mayo in 1898, Devlin founded the UIL section in Belfast which became his political machine in Ulster. He was elected unopposed as Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) Member of Parliament for Kilkenny North in the February 1902 by-election. His first political assignment came that year when the Party sent him to Irish Americas on the first of several successful fund-raising missions.

It was there that he encountered the power of the Hibernian Orders and on his return set about claiming it for constitutional nationalism, when in 1904 he became lifelong Grandmaster of the AOH in Ireland. Members of his Order, largely composed of earlier members of the Molly Maguires, a militant secret society also known as the Mollies, also became members of the Irish Party, deeply infiltrating it.^[2] Already secretary of the London based United Irish League of Great Britain Devlin became General Secretary of O’Brien’s UIL, replacing John O'Donnell, through the initiative of deputy IPP leader John Dillon MP, with whom he held a close alliance and who had fallen under his influence. This "coup" gave them nation-wide control of the 1200 UIL branches, the organisational base of the IPP, depriving O’Brien of all authority.

Devlin had risen in the ranks of the League from being a local Nationalist organiser in Belfast to becoming the only newcomer to the parliamentary party who was accepted politically, as an equal by the established leaders. He was devoted to Dillon who had helped him greatly to his rise to prominence, and Dillon in turn relied greatly on him, not alone for both his control of the UIL and the AOH, but also because he was an outstanding representative of Ulster Nationalism.^[3]

Immense influence[link]

He became a distinguished parliamentarian and had reached the top by the skilful use of two remarkable talents, his persuasive and very powerful oratory, and secondly, that he was a great organisation man, not merely as General Secretary of the United Irish League, but because he also dominated the Ancient Order of Hibernians.^[4] He was the only member of the younger generation to belong to the innermost circle of the IPP leadership and was widely seen as eventual heir-apparent.^[5]

For some years Devlin had been in bitter conflict with the bishop’s Catholic Association who wanted politics based on Catholic rights rather than on nationalism. Now in control of the three nationalist political organisations all sides succumbed to Devlin’s influence. The AOH continued the O’Connellite link between Catholicism and nationalism but under a lay controlled organisations. To the Irish party’s opponents the AOH was symptomatic with Catholic sectarianism, jobbery and patronage.^[6][7] Devlin represented the main urban and national business interests, which contrasted with his advocacy of social reforms when he took up labour issues especially working conditions in the linen mills and textile trades.

In the 1906 general election, Devlin was re-elected to Kilkenny North, and also to Belfast West which he regained from the Unionists by 16 votes. Choosing to retain the Belfast seat, he served as its MP beyond 1918, when his popularity in Belfast and east Ulster survived the downfall of the IPP. Devlin became governor of the nationalist hinterland after his AOH political machinery rapidly saturated the country, acting through the UIL as the militant support organisation of the Irish Party. Devlin could assure John Redmond leader of the IPP, that at Redmond's bid, his organisation could provide full attendance of suitable "supporters" at any meeting, demonstration or convention throughout Ireland,^[8] something Redmond and his party often availed of.

The AOH was vehemently opposed by one nationalist organisation, the Munster based All-for-Ireland League (AFIL), an independent party founded by William O’Brien who held Devlin’s AOH as being at the root of widespread religious intimidation and sectarianism. He and his followers were attacked at a UIL Convention in Dublin in February 1909 by 400 militant "Mollies" organised by Devlin to silence him and his followers at what became known as the "Baton Convention".^[9] This ultimately displaced the parliamentary constitutional movement with physical-force violence, culminating in the partition of Ireland.

Home Rule compromised[link]

With the involvement of Ireland on the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Devlin sided with Redmond’s decision in supporting recruiting ^[10] for Britain’s and the Allied war effort and voluntary enlistment of National Volunteers in Irish regiments of the New Service Army. Redmond’s plan was that, post-war, an intended ‘Irish Brigade’ and the National Volunteers would provide the basis for an Irish army, capable of enforcing Home Rule on reluctant Ulster Unionists.^[11]

After the 1916 Easter Rising Devlin compromised with Northern Nationalists on a temporary six-county exclusion to assist Lloyd George’s abortive home rule negotiations, organising a convention which endorsed exclusion by a vote of 475 to 265.^[12] On the other hand during the Irish Convention he sided with the bishops in blocking Redmond’s compromise with Southern Unionists on Home Rule.^[13] In April 1918 Devlin was signatory to the anti- Conscription Crisis of 1918 pledge. At the end of the war he was elected Nationalist MP for Belfast Falls in the 1918 general election (in which he defeated Éamon de Valera of Sinn Féin), one of the very few Irish Parliamentary Party MPs to retain their seats against the Sinn Féin landslide.

Minority leader[link]

During 1919-1921 his leadership was reduced to six Nationalist MPs. His attempts to achieve a united nationalist front was undermined because of resentment by west Ulster nationalists of his acceptance of temporary partition as the price for a Home Rule settlement in 1916.^[14] He avoided any involvement in All-Ireland politics having accepted that the mandate had passed to Sinn Féin. Although, when he tried to bring up the Croke Park killings that occurred on Bloody Sunday at Westminster, he was shouted down and physically attacked by Conservative MP John Elsdale Molson; the Speaker had to suspend the sitting.

In the first election in 1921 for the Northern Ireland House of Commons after the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was enacted, so as not to allow the Ulster Unionists a “walk-over” he agreed a pact with de Valera that Nationalists would not stand against Sinn Féiners; both parties co-operated during the election and won 6 seats each, the Unionists 40. Devlin, who represented a more moderate nationalist view, was elected for both Antrim and Belfast West. He chose to sit for Belfast West although his seat in the seven member Antrim constituency was left vacant for the rest of the Parliament. He continued to sit at Westminster as leader of the Nationalist Party of Northern Ireland, as both small parties did not recognise the Stormont parliament.

Devlin was re-elected in Belfast West in 1925 when he decided to lead his small party out of abstentionism and sat for the first time in the Parliament of Northern Ireland as head of a powerless opposition, but so as to highlight Catholic grievances, especially in relation to education. He was returned for the four member constituency until Proportional Representation by the Single Transferable Vote was abolished for territorial constituencies and single member seats were introduced for the 1929 election.

From 1929 until his death, Joe Devlin was the Northern Ireland MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone. He won amendment to the Northern Ireland Education Act of 1930 which improved the funding of Catholic schools. Otherwise they were years of demoralisation for northern Catholics, and the party abstained after 1932 due to the abolishment of proportional representation, when frustration finally drove him and his followers out of the Belfast parliament again, when his party abstained. ^[15]

Personal background[link]

“Wee Joe” as he was popularly known, was held in high affection by his constituents for his charming and effervescent personality. He was a fluent and powerful orator. In later years he was comfortably off as director of the Distillery Company and chairman of the Irish News and enjoyed organising summer fêtes – “days of delight” - for Belfast children. His approach in life was ‘getting things done’. He lived most of his life in Belfast, though he spent some earlier years in London. He never married. An acknowledged spokesman and leader of Catholic nationalists in Ulster for decades, Devlin died in Belfast on 18 January 1934. He was buried at Milltown Cemetery. His funeral at St. Peter’s Pro-Cathedral, Belfast, was attended by leading members of both governments. The AOH hall in Ardboe, County Tyrone, is named after him.^[16]

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922, edited by B.M. Walker (Royal Irish Academy 1978)
• Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results 1921-1972, by Sydney Elliott (Political Reference Publications 1973)
• British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (The Macmillan Press 1977)
• A Dictionary of Irish History since 1800, D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty , Gill & MacMillan (1980)
• Who's Who in The long Gestation, Patrick Maume (1999) p. 225, ISBN 0-7171-2744-3
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, A. C. Hepburn, Vol.15 pp. 983,984, Oxford University Press, (2004)
• The Evolution of Irish National Politics, Tom Garvin, Gill & MacMillan (1981) (2005), pp. 105–110 “The Rise of the Hibernians”, ISBN 0-7171-3967-0
• Dividing Ireland, World War 1 and Partition, Thomas Hennessey, Routledge Press (1998), ISBN 0-415-17420-1
• Home Rule, an Irish History 1800-2000, Alvin Jackson, Phoenix Press (2003), ISBN 0-7538-1767-5

External links[link]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Joseph Devlin