9. Portglenone Forest

Portglenone Forest is an ancient woodland site, once part of great woods that stretched from Lough Neagh to Coleraine and west to the Sperrin Mountains. The plantation of Ulster brought intensive deforestation in the 1600s. Significant aforestation did not occur until 300 years later. Dredging work carried out between 1930 and 1942 created riverbanks, known locally as the ‘Bann Dumps’ . These were planted with spruce, pine and larch between 1938- 41.