County Leitrim

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County Leitrim
Contae Liatroma

Location

Statistics

1,588 km²

Population (2006)

28,837

Website: www.leitrimcoco.ie

County Leitrim (Irish: Contae Liatroma) is one of the counties of the island of Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland and is part of the province of Connacht, in the west of the island. Its name derives from the Irish Liath Druim – "grey ridge."

Leitrim has a short length of Atlantic coastline but is mostly inland country. Neighbouring Leitrim are the Ulster counties of Donegal to the north, Fermanagh to the northeast, and Cavan to the east, the Leinster county of Longford to the south and, to the west, the Connacht counties of Roscommon and Sligo. Fermanagh is in Northern Ireland while all the other neighbouring counties are within the republic. The River Shannon and Lough Allen divide Leitrim into North Leitrim and South Leitrim.

In ancient times Leitrim formed the western half of the kingdom of Breifne. This region was long influenced by the O'Rourke family of Dromahair, whose heraldic lion occupies the official county crest to this day. Close ties initially existed with East Breifne, now County Cavan, and the O'Reilly clan seated there. The Normans invaded in the thirteenth century and occupied the south of Breifne until the exile of Irish landholders in 1620.

British Lord Deputy Sir John Perrot had ordered the legal establishment of "Leitrim County" a half-century prior, in 1565. Perrott also demarked the current county borders around 1583, enclosing the namesake grey mountains of the northwest and boggy glades of the southeast. Five forests are traditionally said to have stood in Leitrim up till the seventeenth century. Today's vast marshes likely formed soon after the county's trees were felled. Dampness quickly permeated the area's reputation: locals boasted that farmland "wasn't sold by the acre--it was sold by the gallon!". With such soil suitable solely for cows and potatoes, Leitrim's 155,000 residents (1841 census) were ravaged by the Potato Famine. After sixty years, the wounds had started to heal. William Butler Yeats spent the turn of the twentieth century fascinated with Lough Allen and the Sligo-march.

Today the county has the lowest population and the lowest population density in the Republic and is the smallest county by area in the province of Connacht. Leitrim has the second highest suicide rate by county over the past five years, and the highest in 2005. It also has the highest amount of elderly people per capita of any Irish county, with 7.6% over the age of 75.

Leitrim has the shortest coastline of any county, Nine miles to the south-west of Bundoran. The county town is Carrick-on-Shannon (1,868 inhabitants). In 2003 the first sets of traffic lights in Leitrim were installed at a pedestrian crossing in Carrick-on-Shannon.