Lough Neagh
The largest freshwater lake in the UK, indeed the British Isles, is Lough Neagh (“lokh nay”) in the middle of Northern Ireland (N.I.). Its surface area is 148 sq.miles with an average depth of 30ft., a length of 19 miles and maximum width 9 miles. Five of the six N.I. counties surround it (County Fermanagh has its own lakes ~ Upper and Lower Lough Erne).
Only the water is in public ownership, with most of the bed and banks owned by Dorset resident the Earl of Shaftesbury. This situation has proved to be problematic in terms of monitoring and dealing with the pollution of the lake. It provides half of Belfast‘s drinking water and 40.7% of the whole of N.I.’s supplies, so there is considerable public interest in what solutions politicians, businesses and the Earl might propose.
Neagh has several tributaries, including Upper River Bann, together supplied by 43% of N.I.’s land, but just the Lower River Bann as its outlet, north to the Atlantic. Three canals built in the 1800s have been closed. The fishing industry’s main catch is eels but there are also bream, perch, Northern pike and Atlantic salmon, with the dollaghan being a variety of brown trout unique to Lough Neagh.
(Images LtoR: map at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0, Kenneth Allen at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)