Map of Inishowen 1661
This copy of an 1661 map of Inishowen was emailed to us by John and
Karen McLaughlin. John was originally from Crockglass.
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The first survey and mapping of the estate was, it
seems, carried out around 1609, even though it is only in a mid-seventeenth-century
printed map that the evidence from 1609 survives of the 150-odd
townlands plotted, it is striking that two-thirds of them touched
the coast, and that much of the interior was apparently terra
incognita to the surveyor. The 'island' of Malin (as the northernmost
appendage was called in Chichester's patent) was virtually cut off
by the huge bogs to the south-east of the future Malin Village.
But the overriding impression given by the survey was of a peninsula
more united by water and a coastline than by tracks and cattle paths.
Of bridges and roads there is no evidence; and only in the shadow
of Buncrana Castle is there a suggestion of embryonic urbanization
(although that may be a later interpolation). Just before Chichester
secured the grant of Inishowen, it was proposed that twenty-five
new corporate towns should be created in Ulster, one of which would
be located in Inishowen - on the Isle of Doagh; even by seventeenth-century
standards, that was an optimistic aspiration.
Map and extract taken from Donegal History and Society
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