This is a picture map by Thomas Raven, an English cartographer, drawn in 1622 of The Vintners’ Company buildings at Bellaghy. One sees the bawn at the top of the street and the street running down through the village with a church nearby.

The picture-map illustrates The Vintners’ Company village at Bellaghy. The top of the street is dominated by the bawn. The picture-map is colour-coded and we can clearly see from this that much of the bawn was built of brick and tile and occupied, as the legend says, by Sir Baptist Jones who is an English planter. The single main street runs from the main gate and in the middle of the street we can see the market-cross (this was used as the, its the place where markets were held as much as for religious symbolism) and then in front of it, the stocks: whether these existed is not known but these were clearly drawn by Raven as a symbol of communal and village discipline - those who transgressed would be punished.

Looking closely at the houses, they are all illustrated by Raven as being mostly timber-framed. If one sees next to the market-cross the house occupied by William Cox, one can see the black lines, the timbers illustrating the framing; the central chimney which means that there must have been a room on either side of the front door as you entered it; and then a roof of tiles.

Elsewhere in the village - looking for example to the far-right, one can see small, cream-coloured cabins. These were Irish cabins with little central chimneys in them, and these are believed to be part of the Irish vernacular tradition. On the far-left one sees a water-mill, driven by a stream which runs through the village, powering two large wooden wheels, and this is where the miller would have lived and grain, harvested in the neighbourhood, would have been taken there to be ground.

And then next to the bawn, one can see the church. This is a new-built church for Protestant worship, enclosed within a little palisaded fence. The church site still survives today although the building is a third or fourth generation church building.