My recent paragraph regarding problems of Irish geography reminds a correspondent of a curious fact. Every Irish diocese, he remarks, has an outlet to either the sea or the Shannon. Why were the Churchmen of old, who defined the dioceses, so anxious to find an outlet to navigable water? The curious fact to which my correspondent alludes is brought home to the motorist who drives from Sligo to Bundoran. A couple of years ago I ran along that splendid piece of road above the Atlantic, but was vexed to find it interrupted by a couple of miles of unrepaired highway. The stretch in question proved to be located in a narrow strip of County Leitrim, which here thrusts out to the sea between the Counties of Sligo and of Donegal.
Ecclesiastically, this strip is in the diocese of Kilmore, cutting between Elphin and Clogher. En passant, Clogher also only narrowly touches the sea, squeezing between Kilmore and Raphoe. Within a mere ten-mile sea front four dioceses reach to the ocean.
The Irish Times, August 5th, 1929.