Greenlee Lough

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Greenlee Lough
Location Northumberland
Coordinates 55°01′N 2°21′WCoordinates: 55°01′N 2°21′W
Basin countries United Kingdom

Greenlee Lough is a lough or lake and National Nature Reserve five km north of Bardon Mill, and three km north of the B6318 road in Northumberland, northern England.

The lough is owned and managed as a nature reserve by the Northumberland Wildlife Trust and the Northumberland National Park. It is a shallow lake fringed with water plants. Most of the reserve is open water. The lake's edge has reedbed, herb fen and blanket bog. It is used extensively by wildfowl and waders that feed in the shallow waters and wetlands. The lough was used as a reservoir by the Romans on Hadrian's Wall.

[edit] Early area history

Greenlee Lough lies slightly to the north of the ancient course of Hadrian's Wall, a noted Roman monument in Britain. The story of this wall forms the earliest recorded history of the Greenlee Lough vicinity. The length of Hadrian's Wall is approximately 117 kilometres, spanning the width of Britain; the wall incorporated Agricola's Ditch[1] and was constructed primarily to prevent harrying by small bands of raiders and unwanted immigration from the north, not really as a fighting front for a significant invasion.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ C.Michael Hogan (2007) Hadrian's Wall, ed. A. Burnham, The Megalithic Portal
  2. ^ Stephen Johnson (2004) Hadrian's Wall, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc, 128 pages, ISBN 0713488409