Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 4. Onwards to Porg Hill

 
Leaving the witch thorn and stories of fairies behind, Ray Cowan and I journeyed on towards the next landmark - a hill rising to over 600ft above sea level, which has traces of a ring fort on its summit. Maybe this 'Porg Hill' was a 'fairy forth'? 

- We'll see!

Walking down towards the bottom of this wide, open  stretch of the Cassie, a new (early 20th century) road cuts across our path. This new road runs from the Beltoy Road to Ballycarry and gives access to dozens of farms that once could only be reached from the Cassie. 

But once over the road, we continued straight on, until we started to climb another short rise towards Porg Hill on the right.    

   The 'new' road just crossed is not shown on the following 1860 map of land holdings, but on the map it can be seen that the fields on the Thomas Hoey farm  (plot 17) run from the Cassie at the witch thorn right down to the house that was the Hoey/Hay farm for generations. This farm belonged to Bob Todd's great, great grandfather as described in the last post. You can see from the map that the Hay family farm was originally accessed from a side lane off the Cassie that originally went on to and through another six or seven farms (including the ancestral home of President Andrew Jackson).         

   

This farm (17a on the map) is still called called 'Beech View', and has been in Hay family hands for over 400 years - as the following account sent me by Bob Todd testifies (it was written as part of a book 'The Hoy's of Maryland' by a Captain Charles E. Hoye, following a visit by him from the US to the Beech View farm which - in 1938 - was owned by Isaac Hay):

"There is a tradition among the Hoys in County Antrim that their ancestor came from Scotland as groom in charge of John Dalway's horses, sometime between 1578 and 1606. As a groom, most of his duties were at the castle and bawn (barn), but in time he leased from Dalway a farm about a half mile northeast of the castle on the hill overlooking the Muttonburn valley. This farm, or part of it, now belongs to his descendant, Isaac Hoy, and the present Hoy home here was probably built by the original Scotch settler.The Muttonburn (burn = creek) flows  south into Belfast Lough northeast of Carrickfergus, draining part of Dalway's  Manor. From high ground near Ballycarry the beautiful little valley is in view, a bit of the Lough and County Down in the distance.
    During the last century Hoys were numerous in the Muttonburn Valley; so numerous and so devoted to such Christian names as James and John that some of the descendants of William and Alexander Hoy changed their name to 'Hay'."

 The map shows that the farm between the Hay's and Porg Hill (18) was owned by John Caldwell in 1860, and indeed the Cassie runs right through this farm. Although Ray Cowan's mother was a Caldwell (and indeed it was her family of Caldwells that bought out Dalway's Bawn and farm about 1900, after Marriott Dalway left for Australia), it appears there were two separate families of Caldwells in Bellahill, and this John Caldwell may not have been directly related to Ray, actually belonging to the Bellahill 'Calwells'. Today these families are distinguished by the spelling of the surname (Calwell and Caldwell) but like many other family surnames in the area, the older records often spell the same person's surname in different ways. Anyway, for Ray, this stretch of the Cassie absolutely 'hotches' with family history.

 When we reach Porg Hill, the Cassie sweeps round to the left, and to investigate it properly a diversion is needed through a gate to the right.

 

Looking back from past this gate that leads up onto Porg Hill, we can see the line of the Cassie running back to the site of the witch thorn on the horizon.

It certainly looks as if the Cassie originally came up over Porg Hill on the side track we are now on.

Approaching the summit of Porg Hill, the outline of the raised platform of an ancient earthen fort can be seen on the horizon ahead. 

And from the top, the remains of a 1,000 year old earthen ring fort are faint but unmistakable. Remarkably, this is not a recognised ancient monument site - or at least I couldn't find any record of it in the Archaeological Survey archives in Belfast. But looking at it in from the air in the satellite photos, again a circular shape is visible.

Porg Hill sits at the center of the Poag farm as it was in 1860 (Thomas Pogue 21 on the map). There were two Pogue (Poag) farms in Bellahill in 1860, both off the Cassie and owned by two brothers, William and Thomas Poag. Although the Poag farm at Porg Hill was owned by Thomas Poag in 1860, it was a James Poag living here in the 1830s when his account of the witch thorn was published (see previous posts), and in 1833 when the Ordnance Survey Memoirs for Bellahill mentions the fort on Porg Hill:

"Fort in Bellahill.

On an eminence in the above townland, and holding of James Poag, there stood a fort 21 yds. in diameter. Some traces of the parapet is still visible." 

But if anyone should doubt that this was an important strategic fort site in ancient times, they should do what Ray and I did, and stand in it to survey the spectacular views of the sea - from Belfast Lough right round to the Irish sea and across to Scotland.

This is the only site I know of in the region where there is such an unbroken view of the entire coastline. The following views take you in a panorama from Belfast Lough to the right, panning left towards the Irish Sea. In the first view, Belfast sits at the head of the Lough, right in the center:

The above photo is looking across the mouth of Belfast Lough, towards County Down. The rough remains of the fort wall are in the foreground.

And in the next photo, the Irish sea can be seen continuously from the mouth of Belfast Lough to the right, to the open sea towards Scotland to the left.

Further left still, and the Irish sea view is only slightly interrupted by the tip of Muldersleigh Hill in the center of the above photo. Muldersleigh Hill, beside Whitehead and the Gobbins Road in Islandmagee, being the final destination of the old cattle trail before the cattle were shipped to Scotland.


Once again I am grateful to a Canadian descendant of a Bellahill exile for filling me in on much of his family history around Porg Hill. This time it is Barry Poag who I have mentioned before. His great grandparents were William and Mary Poag in the center of this family photograph taken in Bellahill about 1900.

 
Four of William Poag's sons also in this photograph emigrated to Canada soon afterwards: Samuel Jackson Poag in 1912, Robert Poag (Barry's grandfather) in 1914, David Poag in 1920, and John Poag in 1921. This amazing exodus of four brothers appears to have been in the wake of their cousin, James McMurtry Poag, who had emigrated to Canada in 1906. 
 
Considering that both Canadian contacts mentioned in this post - Barry Poag and Bob Todd - are descended from the Poag and Hay family farms on this part of the Cassie trail, I am very grateful that they have shared so much of their own family history researches of Bellahill with me from the other side of the Atlantic. But the hub of this genetic wheel of local knowledge is, of course, my traveling guide and old school chum Ray Cowan, whose great, great grandfather John Cowan's farm (not to mention those belonging to the Caldwells and other closely related families in Bellahill), was also part and parcel of the historical context of the Cassie. Yes, the landscape itself speaks, but not so much as the memories of the families that lived in it. 

Just below Porg Hill, at the bottom end of the old Poag 20-acre farm, are the ruins of its farmhouse - marked as 21a on the 1860 farm holding map. Again I am grateful to Barry Poag for sending me this photo of the ruins taken when he visited the site in 2008. 



 So, back to Porg Hill. On the ground, and from the historical records, it is a spectacularly important strategic fort site.

 
The modern map above shows how it dominated the lowland coastal approach of the old cattle trail that had - from the earliest times - lead up to the uplands and commons behind Carrickfergus. As a defensive site, it dominates the Dalway's Bawn 'cattle fort' that replaced it 400 years ago. The broader context in the east Antrim coast can be seen in the next map. See if you can trace the Cassie from the south of Lough Mourne past Porg Hill and down to Bellahill and Dalway's Bawn on this map and the one above.

Some time ago, Barry Poag asked Ray and I what the origin of the name 'Porg' was, and if it could have been a corruption of 'Poag'. 
Well, I think both of us agree that that is the case. There is no Irish Gaelic, Old Norse (Viking) or Ulster-Scots etymology for 'porg' that makes any sense. Even more convincing is the fact that the name does not appear on any old map or document before the late 19th century - by which time it had been firmly located right in the middle of the Poag family farm for at least a century! It is easy to see how a non-local map surveyor might have misheard 'Poag Hill' for 'Porg Hill'. 


But as for fairies on Porg Hill? So far, not a whisper!

Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 1. From Beltoy to the 'Resting Slap'

As promised in the last posting, here is the first installment of the walk down the Cassie cattle trail with my re-united primary school friend, Ray Cowan.
We started at the Beltoy Road end of the Cassie, just beside Ray's 'home farm' where he lived when I last saw him (50 years ago). In the foreground of this photo of Ray (with the start of the Cassie behind him), is the Beltoy Road. This 'crossroad' is where the old cattle trail lane from Lough Mourne and the Commons meets the Beltoy Road before the cattle trail continues down the "Cassie" (Causeway) to Dalway's Bawn. This is the point I had got to before in my own explorations, as described in an earlier posting of 29/9/2101 "Along the Cattle Trail - in sight of Scotland".




A quick look at the map shows where we are about to start, marked in red - Beltoy Road. But before we even got going, Ray took me back to the ruined walls of his great grandmother's (Mary Moore) family farm at the end of the earlier section of the cattle trail coming down onto the Beltoy Road from Lough Mourne at Carnmanus - 1 David Moore (1860) on map.

We weren't long rambling round these ruins before the importance of this site to the whole cattle trail became obvious. The Beltoy Road between Eden to the south and Glenoe to the north is an ancient coach road, older than the cattle trail itself, and runs alongside the Copeland Water - the river that marks the boundary between the medieval County of Carrickfergus and the east Antrim lands granted in the 16th century to John Dalway of Dalway's Bawn and John Dobbs of Castle Dobbs.

This crossing point of the Cattle trail with Beltoy Road and the Copeland Water was the first significant "service station" for the drovers after the trek across the Commons from Ballynure, and the Moore farm here had paddocks, a circular "by-pass" lane to act as a passing place, and a frontage on the Copeland Water to water the beasts. It seems like this was an ideal stopping point for the drovers, and, just across the Beltoy Road on the Cassie, was a blacksmith's forge - 2. Blacksmith (William Greer, 1860) on map.

This photo shows the circular "by-pass" lane on the former Moore farm, looking back towards the site of the ruined stone house and outbuildings. The beech trees were planted on the Moore farm, but the belt of conifers that now covers the entire glen of the Copeland Water was planted by the Belfast Water Commissioners some time after 1870 when they bought out the entire Copeland Water river-course. This was done to 'sanitise' the land from farming 'pollution' along the water feed into the Copeland Reservoir that the Water Commissioners were about to construct at Marshallstown. And so the Moore farm was abandoned at that date.

This next view from the top of Carnmanus, looking down over the Beltoy 'glen' towards the fields on the Cowan farm in Bellahill, gives a good impression of how steep the slope was down to the Moore farm from that part of the Commons cattle trail.


Back to the start of the Cassie walk
So, back to where we started at the beginning of this post!












The Cassie is a wonderful country-lane walk, although a bit overgrown on this first stretch, with no sign of the old blacksmith's forge that once sat on the left-hand side.



The lane gets narrower as we go, so it is down to single-file!

I should say that it's not the lane that gets narrower, but that it has only been used as a single line 'pad' and the side hedges have encroached. Ray correctly predicts where there will be raspberry bushes among they blackberries - something he remembered from his childhood!




After a while we reach the first 'feature' of the walk: a sort of lane 'crossroads' - or rather a widening of the Cassie at a bend where two old redundant lane-ways join the Cassie.













Looking back from this point back down the path we had just come up, the line of conifers can be seen back on the far side of the Beltoy Road, where the Moore farm was. The new gate in the front right of the above photo blocks off another overgrown lane that leads to the farm that was the 'original' Cowan farm (marked as "3. John Cowan, 1860" on the map at the start of this post). It is another story for another time, but tracing this lane on older maps, it does seem to continue across the Beltoy Road further north, and on towards the north end of the Commons. This may have been an alternative route for the cattle trail that came round the north end of Lough Mourne rather than the south end.


And on the other side of the Cassie, facing south, is another gate closing off the back lane to Ray's 'home' farm (marked as "3. Cowan Farm, (John Davison, 1860) on map). This is the farm mentioned in previous posts where I attended Ray's 7th birthday party. It was owned by John Davison in 1860, but was bought by Ray Cowan's father in the 1930s and is where Ray was raised.

[To connect the families on the 3 farms highlighted on the map, John Cowan's son (also John Cowan and who was therefore Ray's great grandfather) married Mary Moore (daughter of David Moore of Carnmanus) in Ballycarry Presbyterian church in 1859. One of the witnesses was William Davison (son of John Davison).]


Pressing on, then, towards the 'Resting Slap', the track is still quite overgrown - but that only adds to my own sense of anticipation and exploration.



















Then, another opening appears ahead where the Cassie has a well-worn surface, and we get to the Resting Slap.














Looking back from here (below right), the path we have come seems a long way from the trees on the skyline where we started.

The Resting Slap is an appropriate name for the feature that marks the end of this first stage of our journey. As you can see, there are a number of openings into adjoining fields at this point. The term 'slap' is defined in James Fenton's Ulster-Scots dictionary The Hamely Tongue as meaning "a gap in a hedge allowing the passage of cattle, machines, etc. (normally closed with a gate, strands of barbed wire, etc.)"
It is marked on our map "4. Resting Slap" and the name tells of the days when this was a passing and a resting place for livestock being driven along the Cassie place in both directions. It is likely that the main traffic from the coast up to this point consisted of imported Scottish horses destined for the horse fairs at Ballyclare and Ballynure, along with cattle and other livestock heading for summer grazing on the Commons. The other direction, of course, was mainly cattle heading for the major drove roads in south-west Scotland from Ballynure and further west in mid Antrim.


Through one of the 'slaps' here, Ray pointed out where there was a legend of buried treasure. So, with the whiff of other pieces of folklore including a 'witch thorn' round the corner, we had to take a break at this stopping point ourselves.










The fields beside the Resting Slap mark a change of gradient for the Cassie. From here on, it is a decidedly downslope journey towards Dalway's Bawn and the coast at Whitehead and Portmuck. Glimpses of the distant Scottish coast are a feature along this cattle trail from time to time ahead and to the left. But here on the right hand side of the Resting Slap, Belfast Lough and the County Down coast are visible for the first time.
This somewhat hazy detail from the last photo shows that the Resting Slap even overlooks Carrickfergus. The keep of Carrick castle (built in the 12th century), is silhouetted against the lough in the center of the shot. On many a clear day centuries ago, drovers must have paused to enjoy this sight.

The next stage of the walk takes in even more surprises, and I still can't believe how fortunate I was to meet up again with the one person (Ray) who knows first-hand the history of the fields, farms and families along the Cassie.

Next, on our journey comes the Witchthorn and the site of the 'Witchthorn National School' right in the middle of the Cassie ... (coming soon!)