Qualla: Lough Swilly

Lough Swilly: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kanchelskis, Public domain. Its name means the lough abounding in eyes, or possibly in whirlpools, and in some tellings a many-eyed sea monster called Suileach once lived in its waters until Saint Colmcille killed him sometime in the sixth century. The monster has gone. The eyes remain. Lough Swilly is one of only three true glacial fjords in Ireland, a long blue tongue of Atlantic seawater that pushes forty kilometres inland between the Fanad and Inishowen peninsulas in County Donegal. From the air it looks like a wound a knife left in the north coast. From the deck of a ship it has, for at least two thousand years, looked like a way in.

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Image: Kanchelskis | Public domain

Lough Swilly: The Lough That Watches

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Glacial fjords are rare in Ireland; only Killary Harbour and Carlingford Lough share Lough Swilly's geological pedigree. Ptolemy of Alexandria put it on his map of the world in the second century AD, naming the hill fort of Grianán Ailigh that still crowns its southeastern should...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lough Swilly: Departure Point of an Empire's End

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Qoan (Enrique Íñiguez Rodríguez), CC BY-SA 3.0. On 14 September 1607, ninety followers of Hugh O'Neill and Rory O'Donnell boarded a French ship at Rathmullan on the lough's western shore. They were the last great Gaelic chieftains in Ireland, and they were leaving forever. The Flight of the Earls is one of those rare events wh...

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Image: Qoan (Enrique Íñiguez Rodríguez) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lough Swilly: Cannon, Concrete, and Cold Watch

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Declan McCay, CC BY-SA 2.0. Between 1800 and 1820, fearing another invasion attempt, the British built a ring of fortifications around the lough. Six Martello towers went up in 1804, each costing about 1,800 pounds and armed with smoothbore cannon firing round shot. Walking the shore today you can still see...

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Image: Declan McCay | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lough Swilly: The Wreck and the Gold

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lough Swilly is also a graveyard. On the night of 4 December 1811, a Royal Navy 36-gun frigate was caught in a gale at the entrance to the lough and driven onto the rocks. Of the estimated 253 people aboard, none survived. Roughly two hundred bodies washed up along the shore in t...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lough Swilly: A Quieter Use

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway, founded in 1853, eventually built a network of narrow-gauge lines that connected Derry to the lough's eastern shore and beyond into the Inishowen peninsula. Trains ran until 1953, when buses replaced them; the bus company itself finally c...

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Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0