Here we are looking at Thomas Raven’s 1622 picture-map of The Merchant Tailors’ village at Macosquin: this lies in between Coleraine on the road to Limavady. The illustration shows the usual components of the Plantation villages - manor house and bawn, church, mill and village.

This particular picture-map offers an interesting insight . Looking at the bawn, for example, one sees four walls but when this was recorded the corner towers had not been constructed: clearly then this is evidence of a sequential construction of the bawn. The manor house inside it stands to three-and-a-half storeys, built of stone as the colour-coding indicates with slate roofs and brick chimneys. And the main street of the village here runs off at a right-angle to the gate, rather than perpendicular to it.

On the left stands the church: interestingly this was the site of a Cistercian medieval church which lay in ruins, and the church was clearly refurbished for Protestant worship. Interestingly, Raven has shown a large bell-tower.

The village itself is comprised of a small number of stone houses: captions to two of them say ‘void’ - presumably this means they had no occupants at the time. And on the far right stands the water-mill, driven by the stream which still runs through the village today. A single wheel is shown: presumably this was what’s called a breast mill - the water falling halfway down the height of the wheel but enough to produce rotation.