Lake · United Kingdom
Lough Neagh
Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is the largest lake in the British Isles. This freshwater lake is famous for its eels and gives Northern Ireland about two fifths of its drinking water.
Picture credit: Camcool11 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Alex Liivet (CC0) · Camcool11 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lough Neagh?
Countries on its shores: the United Kingdom.
Largest lake of: the United Kingdom.
Middle of the lake: 54.62° N, 6.40° W
The story behind it
Lough Neagh lies in the middle of Northern Ireland, about 30 km west of Belfast. Five counties touch its shores. The lake is about 30 km long and 15 km wide, but mostly quite shallow. Rivers such as the Upper Bann and the Blackwater flow in, and the Lower Bann carries the water away to the north. An old legend says the giant Finn McCool scooped up a huge lump of earth and threw it at a rival in Scotland. The hole filled with water and became the lake, and the lump became the Isle of Man. The lake is famous for its eels: young eels swim about 6 000 km from the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean and grow up here for 10 to 15 years. Lough Neagh is the largest lake in the United Kingdom, and it also has small islands such as Ram's Island and Coney Island.
Find it on the globe
Lough Neagh is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lough Neagh?
Lough Neagh covers about 396 km² and is about 30 km long. Sources give slightly different sizes, between about 383 and 396 km², partly because the water level was lowered in 1959 to stop floods.
Where do the eels in Lough Neagh come from?
They hatch far away in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean and swim about 6 000 km to the lake. Lough Neagh eels are so special that they have a protected name under European law.
What does the legend say about Lough Neagh?
The legend says the giant Finn McCool tore out a huge lump of earth and threw it at a rival in Scotland. The hole became Lough Neagh, and the lump became the Isle of Man.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
Last checked: