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Ireland - Geography

Ireland is an island on the western fringe of Europe between latitude 51 1/2 and 55 1/2 degrees north, and longitude 5 1/2 to 10 1/2 degrees west. Its greatest length, from Malin Head in the north to Mizen Head in the south, is 486 km and its greatest width from east to west is approximately 275 km. Since 1921 the island has been divided politically into two parts. The independent twenty-six county area, comprising 70,282 sq. km. Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom and contains six of the nine counties of the ancient province of Ulster.

Locked in by the turbulent waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which wash its northern, southern and western shores, its geography and history have been shaped by contacts with its eastern neighbour, the United Kingdom, across the narrow passage of the Irish Sea. Ireland was first called Hibernia by Caesar. Its other names were Ierne, Juverna, Ogygia, and Britannia Minor. It appears that the island was known to the Greeks by the name of Juverna, about two centuries before the birth of Christ. Towards the decline of the western empire, as the country had become more and more known, and had been peopled with various tribes, the Romans discovered that the ruling people in Ireland were the Scoti; and thenceforth the country began to be termed Scotia, an appellation retained by the monastic writers till the eleventh century, when the name Scotia having passed to modern Scotland, the ancient name of Hibernia began to reassume its honours. It is supposed that this name, and the Gothic denomination Ireland, are mere modifications of the native term Erin, implying the country of the west.

Ireland forms a striking contrast to Scotland, being mostly level, fertile, and abundant in pasturage. The chains of hills, for they can hardly aspire to the name of mountains, are few and unimportant. The quantity of the cultivated land in Ireland exceeds in proportion that of England. The most striking feature is the rocky nature of the soil, stones generally appearing on the surface, yet without any injury to the fertility.

Ireland’s geography has infinite variety – laid down by geology, shaped by geomorphology and transformed by human agency, the sea girt isle has a coastline of some 2,797 kms; the country’s maximum length from Fair Head in Donegal to Mizen Head in Cork is 303 kilometres and its breadth from Howth Head in Dublin to Slyne Head in Galway is 274 kms.

The central plain east of the River Shannon is an area of limestone, boulder clay and rich soil. It is dotted with peat bogs and shallow lakes. One-eighth of the land area of Ireland is peat bog and even a good part of the non-boggy land is usually damp and soft. Most of the utilized area of the central plain is given over to agriculture and pasturage. The largest and highest mountain ranges are in the South and Southwest; these ranges trend east-west. The highest mountain, Carrantual in the Macgillycuddy Reeks in County Kerry, is 3,414 feet high. In this area the mountains are high and contiguous; elsewhere, they are knots, or short hills, separated by broad valleys or broader stretches of plain.

These southwestern hills are usually barren, boggy, or craggy moorland, often shrouded in mist and drenched by severe squalls. They shelter the rich agricultural valleys of County Cork. From the River Shannon eastward to the coast, south of the central plain, is a low rolling upland interspersed with hills; this is a region of good pastures, cultivated farms, excellent roads, numerous villages and towns, and a fairly dense population. In the Southeast are the treeless mountains of Leinster rising steeply to the south of Dublin and stretching to Waterford harbor. They overlook a low coastal plain at the southeastern tip of the island.

North of the central plain, the hills of eastern Ulster enclose a plateau in which lies Lough Neagh, the largest body of water in Ireland. West of Lough Neagh are the highlands of Counties Tyrone and Donegal, whose northeast-southwest hills are separated and cut across by valleys and lakes. From Lough Foyle in Donegal to Galway Bay is a continuous mountain region. Lying west of the Shannon, this area is either poorly drained bog or too well drained, bare, and rocky surface. The highlands of western Connacht are rough, poor and forbidding. The main drainage partings of the island are not mountain ranges but low, broad, almost imperceptible ridges, usually not over 500 feet in altitude. Consequently, the headwaters of streams flowing in opposite directions often intermingle, allowing for the easy construction of canals. A series of canals connects Ulster with the central plain and Dublin with the Shannon and with Waterford.

The principal river is the Shannon. In its nature it is more a chain of lakes with tributary streams than a river. Above Limerick City there are rapids, the river falling 100 feet in less than 20 miles; this is the site of important hydroelectric developments. Throughout its course, the Shannon is crossed only at rare fords and causeways, natural and artificial. The northern and western coasts are very irregular with deep indentations and numerous offshore islands. The eastern coast, however, is fairly regular, being only slightly indented at Wexford Bay, Dublin Bay, and Dundalk. The southern coast is less regular than the eastern and is more irregular west of Cobh than east of it. The variation in rise and fall of the tides is generally less on the eastern coast than else- where. Wexford Harbor, for example, has a tidal range of but 3.3 feet at neap tides and 5.1 feet at spring tides; Limerick, on the other hand, in the West, has a variation of 14 feet at neap tides and 18 feet at spring tides.

The margins of the wild Atlantic coast are magnificent landscapes where at intervals steep cliffs as at Slieve League, Slievemore (Achill Island), Inishmore and the Cliffs of Moher, mark the ocean’s edge. Inland spiky peaks rise above blanket peats providing a mountain barrier shaping both weather and human life. Four of Ireland’s six peaks above 3,000 feet (900 metres) are found in the MacGillycuddy Reeks in Kerry. Here in these inhospitable Atlantic ends farmers forged fields and lived through subsistence crisis after crisis until the Great Hunger of 1845 to 1849 and its aftermath re-ordered the population.

The east coast presents a different visage of low, sandy dune backed beaches with intermittent rocky headlands from Wexford north to Louth. Long the most favoured disembarkation point for immigrants, its arable hinterlands are replete with legacies of archaeology and history. Smothered in glacial debris the counties of Meath, Kildare, Dublin, Louth, Wexford and Westmeath all have arable land in excess of 80 per cent of their total areas. Grain was the medieval currency which created the surplus to sustain a rich urban life in towns largely the preserve of the invader. The adjacent countryside hosted the great mansions of Ireland in richly embellished landscapes which draped the river valleys. But in a landscape of infinite variety the mountains of Wicklow and Dublin threw up a granite and schist massif as a background stage.

The middle south of the Republic has a mix of mountain and valley scenery. Here sluggish rivers amble through some of the richest land in Europe in parallel lines reading from east to west – Slaney, Barrow, Nore, Suir, Blackwater and Lee. At journey’s end rivers provide anchorage for a suite of towns. A more in-between if uniform topography guards approaches from the centre to the north of the island. Tightly packed, low, rounded hills, famously described as ‘basket of eggs’ topography, supported by patches of bogland and wet rushy land, stretch from Carlingford Lough in Louth to Clew Bay in Mayo. This is classic small-farm country with its crowded network of carefully bounded and jealously guarded fields with dwellings and associated outbuildings snugly fitted into the drumlin’s face.

Scarcely the semblance of a forest remains in Ireland; but the place of them is unhappily usurped by the moors or bogs, which form a remarkable feature of the country. Ornaments of gold, and other relics of antiquity, have, from time to time, been discovered in the bogs at great depths; and there are other indications that they are of comparatively recent formation. Ireland produces corn, hemp, and flax, in great plenty, and potatoes also are raised here in great quantities.

Among the natural curiosities of Ireland may be mentioned the beautiful and picturesque lake of Killarney, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, clothed with trees, whose verdure is contrasted with intervening rocks. The arbutus, with its searlet fruit and snowy blossoms, here vegetates in great luxuriance. It is divided into three parts, called the Lower, Middle, and Upper Lake. On the side of one of the mountains is O'Sullivan's Cascade, which falls about 70 feet into the lake with a tremendous roar; and opposite this cascade is the island of Innisfallen, not only romantic, but of venerable fame for the annals there written. The E. boundary of the Middle Lake is formed by the base of Mangerton, down the steep side of which descends a cascade, visible for 150 yards: this fall of water is supplied by a lake near the summit of the mountain, called the Devil's Punch-bowl.

What is called the Giant's Causeway must be distinguished among the most remarkable of the curiosities of Ireland. This surprising collection of basaltic pillars is about eight miles. N.E. of Coleraine. The adjacent coast is verdant, but precipitous; and from it the Causeway projects into the sea, to an unknown extent. The part explored is about 600 feet in length; the breadth from 240 to 120; the height from 16 to 36 feet above the level of the strand. It consists of many thousand pillars, mostly in a vertical position. Towards the N.E. is what is called the Organ, in the side of a hill, consisting of 50 pillars; that in the middle is 40 feet high, the others gradually diminishing.