The 7 counties of Northern Ireland May 23, 2023
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Okay, that’s a stretch, but reading Slugger this was mentioned in comments:
In 1963, 50 years ago, Terence O’Neill succeeded Lord Brookeborough as Prime Minister at Stormont. With a reputation for efficiency and moderation, he was a new Prime Minister for a new era.
In his own way.
As Minister of Finance from 1956 to 1963, he built a reputation for elegant sophistication and technical efficiency. But behind the scenes O’Neill was fizzing with the most radical ideas. In 1958 in proposed an eye-popping wheeze for solving unemployment: ‘Can Lough Neagh be drained? It would be equivalent to a new county . . .
County Neagh would have no mountains or bogs and might be quite fertile, it could be planted with trees and people and a new town could be built at its centre. (Strangford is smaller and has salt water and tide but could perhaps also be considered.)’
Imagine if that plan had come to fruition.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Just Lough Neagh? The Dublin-Belfast railway line from the village of Pontzpass to Portadown runs through waterlogged land. Wikipedia tells us that the ‘pass’ in the village’s name is because it ‘was one of a few crossing points across a marsh stretching 25 miles (40 km) from Lough Neagh to Carlingford Lough, following the course of a prehistoric glacial overflow channel.“
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“he built a reputation for elegant sophistication and technical efficiency” and totally wacky off-the-wall ideas, madder than a bridge from Larne to Stranraer.
“And the new County Neagh could be planted with trees AND PEOPLE”. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree 😆
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