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Here we see Thomas Raven’s 1622 picture-map of The Haberdashers’ Company buildings at Ballycaslan: this is not Ballycastle in County Antrim but, in fact, a small settlement near Magilligan along the shores of Lough Foyle. Interestingly, from an archaeological perspective, this is very, very close to the site of the discovery of the Broighta Hoard.
Top-left, one sees the standard bawn illustrated here as standing on quite a high eminence which is not really reflected in today’s landscape. In the middle stands a tall manor-house represented in a way not dissimilar to the Fishmongers’ buildings at Ballykelly - stone construction, slate roof and brick chimneys. The bawn itself, of course, is unfinished: looking carefully at the flanker towers one can see that they are open at the top - the roofs have not been built upon them.
Around the bawn stand what appear to be three English-style houses and two Irish-style houses, but the main Haberdashers’ village was a mile away from the manor-house and bawn, constructed along the single street - mostly of cabin-form, low, single-storey buildings in the English and Irish styles, mostly with thatched roofs.
Interestingly here, Raven illustrates the back gardens of these properties: there is some correlation between this plan of the village of Artikelly, as it is now known, and the present-day landscape.
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