Where did County Coleraine go? - Our Space 15

Then in 1608m after the 9 Years War and the Flight of the Earls, King James initiated yet another Plantation in Ireland. This time the focus was Ulster.

He planned to build a walled town with 200 houses at Derry and a walled town with 100 houses at Coleraine. How to pay for it?

So he took County Coleraine and added a little land from Antrim; and a piece of Tyrconnell west of the Foyle; and from Tyrone he took all the land from Glenshane to Toome Bridge - it was covered with valuable timber. The new county totalled over 800 square miles.

The King approached the London business community - the Livery Companies. He said he would give them most of this land and the Aldermen agreed. But the Livery Companies did not want to pay up the required £20,000 - worth over £4 million now.

So in May 1610 the Court of Aldermen sent two Mercers to jail; then six members of the Drapers’ Company, the Salters’ Company, the Brewers’ Company and the Cook’s Company; and finally two Clothworkers. There was uproar. Imagine Kier Starmer nowadays jailing CBI leaders for not financing a Government project!

The Companies relented and became “reluctant developers”. The new county name prefixed their London to Derry. Now the valuable timber around Maghera is long gone - and many South Derry people still look south or east rather than westward over the Sperrins.