canals leitrim

Built between 1845 and 1856 as a joint navigation/drainage project and also as a famine relief scheme during the Great famine of 1845-49. It joins the Shannon at Leitrim village to the Erne at Aghalane. The locks were built between 1850-52. At Ballinamore there was a quay popularly known as the 'basin' which was attached to the nearby markethouse which took the business of the canal. It took fourteen years to build the original canal at a cost of IR274,272. Restoration of this waterway st...

Work on the original canal started in 1846 and took 14 years to complete. The dream of permanently joining the great River Shannon and the Erne lakes was fulfilled and shattered in a short 9 years when the age of steam and the railways rendered the canal reduntant and it closed to commercial traffic. The leisure potential of re establishing the link has long recognised and since its official opening in 1994, many pleasure cruisers, barges, canoes and sailing dinghies now ply this old waterway w...