Semitar Shetland Sheepdogs // Location
Six rivers converge to form the largest inland lake in the British Isles. According to legend, the Lough is the water-filled hollow left after the hero Finn McCool lifted a piece of land and hurled it into the sea, where it became the Isle of Man.
In the fifth century, Aodh, a disciple of St. Patrick, founded a monastery on the banks of the Six Mile Water, which flows into Lough Neagh. The settlement then grew into Antrim.
Lough Neagh is not only the largest lake in the British Isles, it is also the oldest. Many millions of years ago, long before the Ice Ages, the Tertiary basalt's of the Antrim Plateau, with the underlying chalk, sagged into a great basin lake which slowly filled with Lough Neagh clays, over a thousand feet thick at Washing Bay. As the glaciers melted, Lough Neagh was again a large lake, out flowing from the Newry River and the Lagan Valley before resuming its outlet down the Lower Bann. By the time Irelands first human inhabitants crossed from Scotland it was much the same size and shape as it is today. By about 2000BC people had penetrated up the Bann to Lough Neagh, leaving the Bann Flints as evidence of their culture.