The Commons of Carrickfergus appears on the 1832 map (see last post) as a vast, featureless upland moor, devoid of any evidence of human activity apart from the cattle trail across it. But around the edge was a string of stone-built herds' houses which all seemed to look onto the commons just in the same way as a lough-shore fishing community might be strung around a large lough.
It was only when the revelation came that there was a 'necklace' of old houses around the commons did I realise that the only ruined house 'in' the Commons that I remember discovering as a boy was one of these - right on the boundary of the Commons, near Lough Mourne. Back then (50 years ago) it was roofless and overgrown, and when we pushed our way inside through nettles and brambles, I found a glass sitting on a remains of a window sill.
That glass was badly made, with a crooked stem, an air bubble in the base, and an uneven rim. It went with me in later years to student flats and anywhere else I called home as a sort of token of the many local mysteries and childhood wonders that, one day, I would resolve.
I wrote it into a novel, The Man Frae the Ministry, in a different setting altogether (a fictional Ulster-Scots settlement in Canada), where it became the proof of a former visit by Sam and Joel to old Sawney's house:
'His eyes went from the spot where Sawney had been sitting and spitting into the fire, to where the window was above the table - a table that was now a pale anaemic nettle. There was a small glass, half-full of dirt, on the sill of the glass-less window frame. It was the only piece of furniture to be seen. Sam lifted the glass, emptied it, and ran his finger round the inside to clean it out. "Not broken - nice", he said replacing it by its short stem. It had a slight tilt and a bubble flaw in the base.'
I think life is full of little 'coincidences' and events that only have meaning later. As the gospel song says, "Further along, we'll understand why".
Of course there are other antiquities in this 'barren' land of the Commons. Although permanent buildings weren't allowed until about 1870, seasonal huts made of sods and branches called 'booley huts' were numerous and in parts of the commons their circular pattern can still be traced on the ground. 'Booleying' was the summer grazing of cattle on the mountains and often the children and women lived they for the summer months in these temporary shelters, leaving the men to work the arable strips of 'infield' around the lowland hamlets or 'clachans' of stone-built cottages.
During the time when only Freemen of the town of Carrickfergus had grazing rights on the Commons, the booleying may well have been something that was practiced unofficially by remnants of the 'Old Irish' population living to the back of the Commons in places like 'Ardboley' and 'Milky Knowes'. The huts were always near a fresh water supply, and indeed they are found near 'Bryan O'Neill's Well' and down along the sides of the Woodburn river and the Craignabraher Burn. The Craignabraher Burn gets its name from the 'Friar's Rock' in the Commons which was once both a 'Mass Rock' for Irish Catholics and a 'Field Conventicle' site for Scotch Covenanters in the Penal days. In the 1800s, once the Penal Laws and the Test Acts were repealed, a 'Mass House' (Catholic Chapel) was built to the north-west, and a 'Meeting House' for Covenanter Presbyterians was built to the north-east. These Covenanters were known in Ulster as 'Mountain Men', and I often wondered was there a connection with their American kinsmen, the 'Hill-Billys', for 'billie' is the Scots word for 'friend ' or 'comrade'.
Lough Mourne itself was temporarily drained in the 1920s while it was being converted into a reservoir, and pre-historic dug-out boats were found, along with two artificial islands (crannogs) that were used 1000 years ago as defensive Irish homesteads.
A host of Irish place-names in the Commons testify to the survival of the language into more recent times, along with a smattering of Scots and hybrid Irish and Scots place-names as well. But unlike townland names which have often survived because they were written into land-leases, these local names are a real clue to language and culture of the 'commons' folk.
Craignabraher (Irish: Rock of the Friar or Priest) Slimero (Irish: Red mountain plain) Toppin (Scots: Cairn or peak of a mountain) Isle of Glass (Irish and Scots: Green hill in the bog) Duncrue (Irish: Fort of the cattle payment) Munney Braddy Moss (Irish and Scots: Stolen peat bog) Carnwhissock (Irish and Scots: Cairn of the severe blow) Lignaca (Irish: Hollow of the mist)
For the final antiquity, we must go down the Cattle trail off the Commons to Dalway's Bawn. Here, East of Eden, an old Irish Harp was found in a bog beside the Bawn in the 1700s . This is the famous 'Dalway Harp', so named because it was kept by the Dalway family for years and is now one of the most treasured possessions of the Irish National Museum in Dublin. Dated to 1621, its image is used by the Irish state as its logo, and the name 'Dalway Harp' has become the generic name for this type of classic Irish harp.
Up till now, I've only been able to show glimpses of the Cattle trail across the Commons of Carrickfergus as it survived after the Commons was broken up into farms after 1860.
It has taken me weeks to get hold of it, but at last I have a copy of the 1st Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1832. To my delight, it shows the whole townland of 2,730 acres without any farms, fields, fences or buildings. And right across it is an unfenced trackway which I have highlighted in green. It is exactly where it was anticipated.
Another thing that springs out (click on the map to enlarge it and see for yourself), is that the boundary of the Commons has a multitude of small houses lined right along the boundary. Before the 1860 enclosure, permanent dwellings were prohibited, so these were herds' houses, squatters' cabins, or shelters used by drovers and peat diggers.
The same thing is shown on the 1832 map further west, towards the middle of the Commons - small cabins or houses lined along the boundary, and the trail cutting across north of the source of the Woodburn River which flows down into Belfast Lough on the West side of Carrickfergus.
The source of the Woodburn River is marked on this (and later maps) as "BRYAN O'NEILL'S WELL".
When I went back to the Commons recently to see if any parts of the old cattle trail from Ballynure to Dalway's Bawn could still be traced on the ground, I saw this old haunt in a new light.
The photo shows the old drove road as it leaves the south-east end of the Commons just below Lough Mourne, heading east towards Dalway's Bawn. From here the trail continues as an unsurfaced country lane for 3 miles across the 'North-East Division' of Carrickfergus County, and on through the townland of Bellahill, down past the 'Resting Slap' to 'Bullock's Walk' beside Dalway's Bawn.
The first thing that strikes you when you look at this on a 1950s map of this part is that the Commons trail which once crossed an open upland area has been mostly hidden under a patchwork of small fields and farms that followed the 'Enclosure' and letting of the Commons after 1860. Only eastwards from the south end of Lough Mourne does the original track survive, roughly from the point where Hart's Loanen reaches the Commons from Boneybefore. Hart's Loanen remains a similar 'green' country lane up at its north end, and is the way we Boneybefore lads walked up to Lough Mourne countless times in the 1960s and 1970s.
This Land Valuation map of 1860 shows the Commons about to be enclosed, with the outlines of the new land parcels outlined and numbered in red. This was before the fields were planted out and before any houses had been built there.
But the faint lines of the unfenced track-ways still (in 1860) crossing the Commons from north-west to south-east can be seen underneath. The Cattle trail seems to have wandered about the open hill top grassland at will.
The highlighted boundary of the Commons shows that only this bottom part of Lough Mourne was actually in the Commons. Lough Mourne itself was turned into a Water Reservoir in the 1930s, and to preserve the immediate water catchment area around it from farm 'pollution' the surrounds were planted out with conifers about the same time.
But the big 'planting' difference in the landscape up here was made with the setting of hawthorn field hedges when the small 'Commons' farms were laid out 150 years ago (wherever the upland was grass rather than bog).
Even the thorn hedges which grow along the dykes on either side of the surviving cattle trail were not an original feature on the Commons.
1. Dalway's Bawn; 2. The Cattle Trail across the Commons from Ballynure to the coastal ports linked to Scotland; 3. Dalway Manor - the large tracts of land acquired in east Antrim by Dalway (and his tenants and partners).
Put them together and what comes out of the mix? They reveal the big picture of a cattle trading 'empire' that began in the 1500s and was still going strong in 1850.
The map of these combined ingredients is worth a close look (click on it to see it properly), for it tells the whole story: Note the lands to the north west around Ballynure and its Fair Hill which was the Ballynure part of 'Dalway Manor'; Note the lands to the east around Dalway's Bawn that made up the other half of Dalway Manor; Note the 'Aldermans' land in the North-East Division of the County of Carrickfergus that was controlled by Dalway and his tenant-farmers (and which gave his bigger operation the right of access to the Commons and grazing rights across it). When the Cattle trail is shown linking all these, the pattern suddenly leaps out in a way that no written history has yet recorded, and the true purpose of Dalway's Bawn is revealed.
The earliest known date of a grant of the Broadisland and Kilroot lands to John Dalway was in 1591 from his wife's cousin, Shane McBryan O'Neill. But when Shane as chief of north Clandeboy died in 1596, the country was in turmoil. The MacDonnells had overrun the district by 1597, and after the death of Sir John Chichester at Battle of Pin Well (on Dalway's lands at Ballcarry), John Dalway, John Dobbs, Lieutenant Hart and Sir Moses Hill - all with an interest in these lands, had to flee and wait for quieter times.
The end of the Elizabethan war in Ireland was marked by the surrender of Hugh O'Neill on the very eve of Elizabeth's death in 1603. The new monarch was James I of England and Scotland, who had formerly been James VI of Scotland and a kinsman of the Scottish MacDonnells of the Glens. But John Dalway did get a re-grant of 'such lands as he held in right of his contract with Shane O'Neill'.
A few years later, in 1608, came the definitive 're-grant' of these lands to John Dalway from James I, 'with the consent of the commissioners' for the Ulster Plantation. It was probably the plantation commissioners that introduced what was for them a standard clause requiring Dalway to build:
'within the next seven years, a castle or house of stone or brick ... with a strong court or bawne about the same, in any convenient place, within the territory of Ballinowre'.
The lands of this grant are described in great detail, not only listing the individual townlands of the two separated territories of Ballynure and Broadisland, but also giving a precise description of the boundaries of these two estates (see the above map for the general locations).
There are a few more interesting details in the 1608 grant to John Dalway. He was
'to hold at Thomastowne, within the cinament of Ballynowre, a friday market, and a fair on the feast of St Bartholomew, and two days after; unless the fair-day fall on a Saturday or the Lord's day'.
Another part of the grant confirmed Dalway's holdings as a freeman within the County of Carrickfergus as:
'the half burgage ... on the E. side of High street, in the town of Carrickfergus ... two parcels of ground near the E. end of said town ... one extending to the commons of the said town, northwards ... lately assigned to said John Dalway for his Aldermans share of said townlands of Carrickfergus.'
The grant then goes on to mention that Dalway could in turn grant any part of the estate, apart from 600 acres for his own demesne, to any English or (lowland) Scottish subjects without needing 'the king's license' to do so. Some breakup of the estate did occur, but nothing that interfered with the basic economic thrust of the cattle trail. A Scottish noble man, Sir Archibald Edmonston, took a large section of the estate at Red Hall around Ballycarry in 1609, but this only served as a catlyst for thousands of lowland Scots settlers to overwhelm the district and secure the northern approaches that had been so vulnerable to incursions from the Glens. John Dobbs of Castle Dobbs married Margaret Dalway, the daughter of John Dalway and Jane McBryan O'Neill, and so the Dobbs family eventually owned much of the Kilroot and Ballynure lands.
When these lands are mapped, the whole thing suddenly makes sense. But it is also clear that the Dalway control of this cattle trail from the Sixmilewater Valley through to the ports for Scotland at Whitehead and Islandmagee could not have happened without the important central link in the chain - the Commons of Carrickfergus.
It was the old cattle drove trail across the Commons of Carrickfergus that connected Dalway's Ballynure and Broadisland estates. The townland of Castletown just east of Ballynure not only includes the site of the 'old castle' and bawn at the river crossing of the Castle Water, but also the 'Ballynure Fair Hill' which held fairs for cattle and pigs in May, September and October, with a large horse fair also held on nearby Reagh Hill in May, November and Christmas Day. Many of the pigs and cattle sold at Ballynure Fair ended up on boats leaving Portmuck (muc is Irish Gaelic for 'pig') or Whitehead for the drove roads in south-west Scotland. Dalway's Bawn was their last stopping place before the 'end of the trail'.
This is the second time the East of Eden Chronicles have taken a strange twist with the discovery of another old photograph taken about 1953 (see the 'year of the crowning' post). The event was a birthday party for Raymond Cowan - the boy in shorts pointing a toy gun across my face at the sheep. It was held on the Cowan farm at Bellahill beside Dalway's Bawn, and behind Raymond is my mum. Mrs Cowan is beside my mum on the left of the picture. In front of Mrs Cowan is Eric Glynn (of Davy Crockett hat fame in previous posts) . Mrs Glynn (with the round glasses second from the right) came from the area between Dalway's Bawn and Ballycarry before she was married.
But on this occasion I want to introduce another classmate from Eden Primary School - Alexander (Victor) Hart on the extreme left. His brother Ian is feeding the lamb on the extreme right, and my younger brother is in the middle at the front. Mrs Hart is the tall lady in the center.
This uncanny gathering is relevant to the Dalway story not just because it places us on a farm at Dalway's Bawn, but because the Harts play an important part in that story.
Jumping forward from 1597 when Lieutenant Harte was with John Dalway at the Battle of Pin Well at Ballycarry, to the mid-1800s, we find an Alexander Hart (sometimes spelled Harte) as the principal tenant farmer on the Dalway home farm at the Bawn in Bellahill townland.
Victor Hart (who I have just renewed contact with after 55 years) tells me that he is the 5th Alexander Hart from his home farm at Newseat, near Boneybefore. His brother Ian is still 'feeding the sheep', as he is now a Presbyterian minister of a large Belfast congregation.
But back in 1860, Alexander Hart was Dalway's main tenant farmer at Bellahill, and he had a network of other farms in the nearby townland of Crossmary and in the 'County of Carrickfergus' (which was divided into Alderman's Shares between 1576 - 1601). These Hart farms were mostly in the North-East Division of Carrickfergus, although one holding was a 'Burgers' plot in the center of the medieval town. The Aldermans Shares in North-East Division ran in parallel strips up to the Commons, and they brought with them rights of access to and grazing on the Commons. Up alongside each strip was a lane or 'loanen', and Hart's loanen ran up beside Victor's farm at Newseat and gave us Boneybefore boys a gateway - a straight walk - up to what was the magical world of Lough Mourne and the upland moors and bogs of the Commons.
Like Eric Glynn, Victor Hart was in my class at school and the three of us walked the mile or so from Boneybefore to Eden twice a day. On the way home (so Victor reminds me) I often went past my own house and walked with him back to his farm up Hart's Loanen until dark. The memories of this and of another parallel laneway on the next Aldermans strip (Davy Jack's Loanen) to Davy Jack's farm are legion, but I must stick to the story after one digression. Davy Jack's farm had a waterwheel, open-hearth cooking and he only used horses in the fields. His only road transport was a horse and farm-cart, and many times I rode in it even as far as Carrickfergus. On the side of the cart was 'Hugh Jack, Bluefield' painted in small white letters. I now know that Davy's grandfather was a Hugh Hart Jack, that his great-grandmother was an Alexandrina Hart who married a Hugh Jack, and that her father was the Hugh Hart of Bluefield farm that is marked on the map 0f 1860.
The fields on all these farms were always stocked with cattle when I was young, with a multitude of small thorn-hedged fields climbing up like ladders towards the foothills that marked the beginning of the Commons. The lanes were literally cart-tracks, but straight and not regarded as private.
When I re-trace my steps up Hart's Loanen (in my minds eye, for the fields are all housing developments now), I force myself not to divert into Victor's farm at Newseat. A bit further and the 'ruins' appear (the earlier Hart farm of Alexander Hart Senior in 1860). Then over a hump-back bridge, past Smiley's farm (John Smiley had joined the Star of Eden Pipe Band), straight across the Middle Road and on up a steep rise until the blue, wild waters of Lough Mourne were reached. Carrickfergus Castle used to house some prehistoric dug-out wooden boats found here, and the surrounding 'mosses' had wild plants and birds we never saw down in the lower fields.
I allow myself this apparently meaningless nostalgic ramble for three very good reasons:
a) I didn't know before now that there was a Hart family connection with John Dalway, or with Dalway's Bawn;
b) I didn't know before now that Hart's lane had originally been a secondary cattle drove route to and from the Commons; and,
c) I didn't know before now that a James Esler was a tenant of Alexander Hart at Dalway's Bawn in 1860 - sharing a double cottage with another 'byresman' called William Close. A 'byre' is, of course, a cattle-house and it appears these men were actually 'cow-boys' in Dalways Bawn itself. But my maternal grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were all cattle farmers along the cattle drove routes of mid-Antrim, and had the same name: James Esler.
Now if it turns out that I am related to this James Esler, I will be just as excited as Victor Hart was to learn that he was descended from Dalway's comrade, Lieutenant Hart of Carrickfergus in 1597.
(This is the fifth of a series exploring the history of the Dalway cattle drove trail)
Although the Earl of Essex had died in 1576, the remains of his Elizabethan English colony settled in the town of Carrickfergus.
John Dalway was one of those who came to the fore in the town by the 1590s, along with John Dobbs and a Lieutenant Harte, and these three men were to play a critical role in the story of Dalway's Bawn and the later cattle trail.
By the late 1600s, Carrickfergus had entrenched its 'English only' policy within the walls of the town, so the suburbs shown to the west remain to this day as 'Irish Quarter' (where the town's Catholic Church is located). 'English' meant 'Established Church', and the town's freemen were required all to attend the old Anglo-Norman church of St Nicholas in the town. The suburb to the east (also shown in the foreground of the inset illustation) is 'Scotch Quarter' along a road leading east - to Boneybefore and Kilroot.
The 'big' church all of us in Boneybefore used to attend for special occasions was Joymount Presbyterian Church in Scotch Quarter. The name 'Joymount' comes from the large mansion shown in the inset. Joymount House (called after Lord Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy in Dublin) was built in 1610 by Sir Arthur Chichester, Governor of Carrickfergus and Ulster, and brother of Sir John Chichester who had been Governor of Carrickfergus until he was killed by the Antrim (Highland) Scots at Ballycarry in 1597, with Dalway, Dobbs and Harte fleeing the scene. But the 'Scotch' of the Scotch Quarter - and most of east Antrim and Islandmagee - were not 'Highland Scots', but were lowland Scots that had settled after 1603 when James VI of Scotland took over from Elizabeth I as James I of England and Scotland.
The early 'Scotchmen' that were threatening Carrickfergus in the 1590s were Highland, Catholic and Gaelic-speaking Scots in the glens of north-east Antrim known as the 'MacDonnells of the Glens'. Their main stronghold was Dunluce Castle at the far end of County Antrim, and the seeds of conflict had already been sown by Essex with his raid on Rathlin Island in 1574.
In 1594, twenty years after John Dalway first settled in Carrickfergus, he was still living there in a tower-house with his wife Jane McBryan O'Neill (a close relative of Shane McBryan) and their daughter Margaret (who later married John Dobbs of Castle Dobbs). By this time John Dalway had been appointed 'Sheriff of Antrim' and was writing regular intelligence reports to the Lord Deputy in Dublin and Sir Henry Bagenal in Newry. The theme of these letters was always the same - the loyalty of the Clandeboy O'Neill's (particularly Shane McBryan O'Neill, his wife's cousin) was solid, but they were under intolerable pressure from Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and James McSorley Boy MacDonnell of the Route (north Antrim).
John Dalway had got a grant from Shane McBryan O'Neill of the lands at Broadisland (Ballycarry) and Kilroot in 1591, paying in cattle rather than money yearly to Shane and his heirs. In 1594, as Sheriff of Antrim, John Dalway 'examined' Shane McBryan and wrote to the Lord Deputy that
"the Earl of Tyrone sent O'Hagan to Belfast to have the said Shane become his man and run against the Queen."
But Shane had resisted and provided Dalway with 'promises and slanty'.
A year earlier, in 1593, Dalway had reported from the 'Camp at Comber' that
"Owen McHugh, that killed Neal McBryan Ferta's son, has drawn a large force to assail the great Ardes."
A 'great prey' of cattle had been taken fron Neale McBryan O'Neill of north Clandeboy, and 500 men were beseiging him.
As 1594 progressed, Dalway's reports concentrated more and more on the threat posed by the Antrim Scots.
"James Oge McSorley Boy MacDonnell took from Neale McBryan Ferta the number of 200 cows besides garrans (horses) and other spoil, and doth threaten to make his repair thither again."
He urged the Lord Deputy to send some men to help defend Shanes Castle at Antrim, for "if it should be lost the whole country will be thrown open". In July 1594 Ensign John Dalway wrote again to the Lord Deputy that the cattle belonging to the townsmen of Carrickfergus had been taken prey by James MacSorley Boy MacDonnell. He feared that "the town will be overthrown if more force is not speedily sent." In October the same year he reported that £300 worth of lead and powder had been landed in the Glens of Antrim from Scotland.
The reinforcements that arrived in Carrickfergus in 1595 were under John Chichester from Devon who was Sergeant-Major of the Elizabethan army in Ireland. As Shane McBryan had apparently joined the Earl of Tyrone in rebellion, Chichester captured Shanes 'bawn' at Antrim, and took Shane to Carrickfergus Castle where he again pledged support for the Queen. However, Shane died while still at Carrickfergus and his estates were forfeited to the Crown. Dalway later received a re-grant from the Crown of the east Antrim estates that he had previously been renting from Shane. Sir John Chichester was then appointed Governor of Carrickfergus and John Dalway made 'Deputy Victualler in Ireland'.
But the threat of the Antrim Scots came to a dramatic head on Dalway's lands at the 'Battle of Pin Well' in Aldfracken Glen (near Ballycarry) in 1597 .
James McSorley Boy MacDonnell had brought a large force down from the north of the county into east Antrim. Having plundered Islandmagee he concealed the most of his men in Aldfracken Glen near Ballycarry, and approached the North Gate of Carrickfergus Town in a provocative show of defiance. Sir John Chichester took the bait, and pursued him with about 20 of his horsemen, including John Dalway, John Dobbs and a Lieutenant Harte who later provided an eye-witness account.
When Chichester and his men reached Aldfracken Glen, they were set upon by the larger force of Antrim Scots, and a complete rout occurred. Sir John Chichester was captured, and MacDonnell cut his head off on a nearby rock, tossing it to his men to play football with. About ten of Chichester's men were also killed, but several others escaped by swimming across Larne Lough and hiding in the caves near the Gobbins in Islandmagee. Although he was injured, Lieutenant Harte escaped to Islandmagee as well, "and so by swimming over saved my lief." Among the other runners was Lieutenant Dobbs who "retreated under a bridge until the danger had passed." Another runaway was Lieutenant John Dalway, who concealed himself for a time in the dry flow or ooze left by the shallow water that had once separated Islandmagee from the mainland.
Sir John Chichester was replaced as Governor of Carrickfergus by his brother, Sir Arthur Chichester. It was Sir Arthur who built the mansion house of Joymount in the town in 1610, and who had led the Elizabethan forces across into Tyrone to finally put down the rebellion of the Earl of Tyrone in 1603.
In St Nicholas's Church in Carrickfergus, in a side-aisle reserved for the Chichesters, is a monument to Sir Arthur and his wife. Beneath them is an effigy of Sir John. When James MacSorley Boy MacDonnell as an old man visited the monument, he is reported to have pointed to the effigy of Sir John and said,
"How the deil did he come to get his head back, for anes I taen it frae him".
Underneath the Chichester Aisle in St Nicholas Church is the Chichester's family burial vault with lead coffins of various early Chichesters. The skull of Sir John sits on a stone shelf at the back.
Once the Elizabethan war in Ulster was ended in 1603, three of the men lucky to escape with their lives at Ballycarry, (John Dalway, John Dobbs and Lieutenant Harte), were soon to play a central role in the next stage of the story of Dalway's Bawn and the cattle trail it controlled.
(This is the fourth of a series exploring the history of the Dalway cattle drove trail)
John Dalway’s Bawn and his cattle ‘empire’ in east Antrim were to prove the most enduring legacy of the Elizabethan Plantation carried out by the Earl of Essex in east Antrim in the 1570s.
In 1571, Elizabeth I granted her Principal Secretary of State, Sir Thomas Smith, 360,000 acres of Sir Bryan McPhelim O’Neill’s Clandeboy estates in north Down and south Antrim. This was a grand scheme to reverse the centuries old encroachment of the Earldom of Ulster by the Clandeboy O’Neills. But when Bryan O’Neill laid waste the abbeys and other major buildings in north Down, along with the town of Carrickfergus, the venture appeared ill-fated. Thomas Smith (Sir Thomas’s son) led only about 100 soldier-settlers across to Strangford, and had already realised that it would only be practical to occupy the ‘Ards’ area of north-east Down. With Bryan O’Neill having destroyed any place of shelter or fortification in north Down, the Smith colonists were forced to winter in Carrickfergus. By 1573, the Smith venture had all but collapsed with the assassination of Thomas Smith at Comber, and Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex came to the rescue by offering take over the responsibility for the county Antrim part of the plantation, in return for helping to secure Sir Thomas Smith’s possession of the Ards.
Elizabeth agreed to the deal and appointed the Earl of Essex as Captain General and Governor of Ulster. He had mortgaged his own estate for £10,000 to the Queen as the venture was to be jointly funded between Elizabeth and Essex, including the cost of all fortifications. He arrived in Carrickfergus late in 1573 with 1200 men (ten times more than Thomas Smith junior had brought the previous year). Of these he had raised 200 horse and 400 foot soldiers himself, and the Queen had provided the same number. Each horse soldier that served for two years was to get 400 acres, and each foot soldier, 200 acres.
For the duration of his stay, Essex rarely ventured out of his Carrickfergus base. In his own words, “At my arrival here I found the countries in arms, and no place out of the hands of the Irish rebels or Scots, but only the town of Knockfergus, which the townsmen meant to leave and abandon, having prepared all things for their journey into the English Pale; but the townsmen, taking heart by the bruit of her Majesty's army to be sent under me, staid their determination, and have now settled themselves in their habitation."
Shortly after his arrival in 1573, Essex learnt that Thomas Smith had been killed at Comber ‘by an Irishman of his own household’, and he sent some Elizabethan troops to Holywood, county Down to help protect the house of a Mr. Moore, one of ‘the Queen’s pensioners’ after he too was killed. As Governor, Essex had full use of Carrickfergus Castle, but he also had a base near West Street in the town called both “Essex’s Mount” and “Crannaghbawn” (Wattled Bawn). The street leading up to West Street is still called Essex Street, and Governor’s Place at the south end of Essex Street was originally named Governor’s Walk after him. Along High Street, where most of the Elizabethan tower houses had been built, lived John Dalway (later of Dalways Bawn), Moses Hill (also constable of Olderfleet Castle at Larne), John Lugg (later of Castle Lugg at the western edge of the County of Carrickfergus), Richard Spearpoint (later holding lands at Magheramorne) and Thomas Stevenson (later holding land along with Moses Hill at Straid, near Ballynure). A ‘Bawn’ immediately in front of the castle was owned by Captain William Piers who later attempted to pick up some of the pieces of the Smith colony in the Ards.
The Earl of Essex and his followers (including John Dalway) were intended to get Upper Clandeboy (south and east Antrim apart from Carrickfergus), and Elizabeth’s soldiers were to get whatever lands they could win from the MacDonnells and McQuillans (the 'Antrim Scots') in the north of the county. But between 1573 and 1575 many of the adventurers returned home, disillusioned with the collapse of the Smith colony in county Down and two fruitless but bloody forays into the interior of the county. The most disastrous of these involved establishing a garrison on Rathlin Island to neutralise the threat posed by Sorley Boy MacDonnell. By 1574 Essex recognised that, like Smith, he could not possibly colonise all the area granted to him. He was likely to be confined to the town and county of Carrickfergus if he did not modify his proposals. So a revised scheme was devised for a series of settlements along the Antrim coast from Belfast to north of Larne.
Eventually Elizabeth also accepted that Essex had overstretched himself. On the surrender of Lower Clandeboy and in recognition of the capital he had already invested and lost, Essex was granted the peninsula of Islandmagee. With the exception of a few of his followers that had settled along the north coast of Belfast Lough (Greencastle, Whitehouse ‘Bawn’ and Castle Lugg near Greenisland), most of the colonists, including John Dalway, preferred the relative security of the town and county of Carrickfergus.
It is easy to see why Essex chose to consolidate his own position at Islandmagee. Like Sir Thomas Smith in the Ards, he recognised the natural security of a peninsula as it meant that only the land approach was vulnerable to cattle raids. A tower house was built at Larne (Olderfleet Castle) to defend the mouth of Larne Lough and the short ferry crossing to Islandmagee, and at Whitehead another (Castle Chichester). These were at least partly financed by Elizabeth, and Essex garrisoned them with his own men as outposts of Carrickfergus rather than as private settlements. Moses Hill was ‘constable’ at Olderfleet, and John Chichester at Whitehead. Portmuck Castle in Islandmagee was probably built at the same time, as the Chichesters (when John and later his brother Sir Arthur Chichester were Governors of Carrickfergus) held responsibility for the maintenance of both.
But all was not well for Essex in his private life. His wife Lettice (a daughter of Sir Francis Knollys who was himself involved in earlier attempts to colonise Antrim) had been romantically attached to the Earl of Leicester before her marriage to Walter Devereux. At that time, the Earl of Leicester was Queen Elizabeth’s ‘favourite’, and it was her jealousy that ended his attachment to Lettice and provoked a hasty marriage to Essex about 1560. Not surprisingly, when Essex was in Carrickfergus, she resumed an affair with Leicester and news of this reached him.
The Earl of Essex returned to England at the end of 1575, resolved "to live henceforth an untroubled life"; but he was ultimately persuaded to accept the offer of the Queen to make him Earl Marshal of Ireland. He arrived in Dublin in September 1576, and three weeks afterwards died of dysentery, although poison was suspected at the behest of the Earl of Leicester (who married Lettice shortly after). The massacres of the Clandeboy O'Neills at Belfast and the north Antrim ‘Scots’ on Rathlin Island left a dark stain on the Earl of Essex’s reputation and he was succeeded in his Islandmagee estate by his (and Lettice’s) son, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
It was in the 1590s that Robert Devereux became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the Elizabethan surge to colonise east Antrim got fresh energy.
Esther, Quaen o tha Ulidian Pechts (Children's story) (Ullans Press, 1997) Wake the Tribe o' Dan (First novel in 'Drumcrun' trilogy) (Ullans Press, 1998) Fergus an tha Stane o Destinie (Children's story) (Ullans Press, 2000) The Back Streets o' the Claw (Second novel in 'Drumcrun' trilogy) (Ullans Press, 2000) The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600-1670 (1st edition, Gill and Macmillan, 1984, 2nd and 3rd editions, Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994 and 2001) The Man frae the Ministry (Third novel in 'Drumcrun' trilogy) (Ullans Press, 2005) Alang tha Shore (Poems) (Ullans Press, 2005) Ulster-Scots: A grammar of the written and spoken language (Ullans Press, 1997, 2nd edition, 2007) Oul licht, New licht (Poems) (Ullans Press, 2009) The Old Orange Tree (Novel) (Ullans Press, 2009)
I was born and raised in east Antrim, Northern Ireland.
Married to Helen, with one son (Fergus) and two daughters, Amy and Beth.
Been living in the Ards Peninsula, Co. Down for 25 years now. I used to work as a Curator at the Ulster Folk Museum. Got that job on the strength of a Ph.D on the 17th century Plantation of Ulster. Main academic interests were vernacular houses, Irish and Ulster-Scots (Scotch-Irish)folklore and the Ulster-Plantation.
Now pensioned off as an office trouble-maker, and in retirement have published 4 novels, 2 books of poems and 2 children's books (and do a bit of adult teaching, including a year as Arts Council 'Ulster-Scots Writer in the Community').
In politics, post-party (not quite anarchist - yet!) and in religion, post-denominational.
The Commons of Carrickfergus appears on the 1832 map (see last post) as a vast, featureless upland moor, devoid of any evidence of human activity apart from the cattle trail across it. But around the edge was a string of stone-built herds' houses which all seemed to look onto the commons just in the same way as a lough-shore fishing community might be strung around a large lough.
For the final antiquity, we must go down the Cattle trail off the Commons to Dalway's Bawn. Here, East of Eden, an old Irish Harp was found in a bog beside the Bawn in the 1700s . This is the famous 'Dalway Harp', so named because it was kept by the Dalway family for years and is now one of the most treasured possessions of the Irish National Museum in Dublin. Dated to 1621, its image is used by the Irish state as its logo, and the name 'Dalway Harp' has become the generic name for this type of classic Irish harp.
