Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Pococke's Tour in Ireland in 1752 (Author: Richard Pococke)

entry 7

On the 29th. it being a wet morning I did not set out till noon for Carrickfergus eight miles distant it is a pleasant road near the bay. This is a poor town tho' well situated, the Castle is built on a rock, which is washed on three sides by the sea, it is a strong place and is kept in pretty good order, and no one being permitted to go to it in time of war, the orders have not been taken off in time of peace. Lord Donegal has a very large house here, built about the time of Queen Elizabeth, when his Ancestor Sir (?Arthur) Chichester was Lord Deputy of Ireland, and obtained the grants of his great Estate, which in this country as I was inform'd is £8,000 a year, that he has


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5 or £6,000 a year in other parts, and that if the whole were out of lease it would let for £30,000 a year. There are great plenty of small scollops in this sea: The Mayor has the Admiralty from Fair Point to the North to Beerlooms near Strangford, the creeks of Bangor and Belfast excepted, they had also in the same extent all customs which Lord Strafford purchased for the King for £2,000, after which the Custom house was removed to Belfast, and this town began to decline. I dined here. The Mayoralty here is worth disputing, and has caused a division in the town, for it is about £100 a year, chiefly arising out of lands given for forage for the King's troops, who have not of late years been sent to Barracks here. I set forward on the sea coast and passed by Castle Dobbs, the seat of that gentleman who is member for Carrickfergus, and has so strenuously pushed the affair of a passage through Hudson's Bay, but without success. The Castle is a low situation behind the hill, but he is building on a very fine spot on the rising ground. A little further is a very pleasant mansion house of Mr. Brice: I ascended a little height, at the top of which a new and most beautiful scene appear'd of the delightful harbour of Larne, which comes in between the land, and makes what they call Magee Island a Peninsula; but I could not learn that there was any rivlet or opening from the South end of this bay into the sea, as the maps represent it which would make it an Island. It is about six miles in length and a mile and a half broad, and much resembles the high ground that runs the length of the Isle of Wight, but it is not so high, and there is no level ground on each side but it is all cover'd with corn and rich pasturage. I saw two roads one along the top of it, another on the west with many houses on each side of it, and if I mistake not there is a third on the

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east side; It is without trees the most beautiful and extraordinary spot that can be imagined: this and the country to Larne is the Estate of the Lord Donegal, as all to the north belongs to the Earl of Antrim. I travelled near this fine harbour, and came to a new kind of soil a white lime stone, which having flint in it, as chalk always has, I do much suspect that it was formerly in that state, for it will now almost mark white; the flint in it is chiefly of a pale blue and whitish: above this is what they call rotten rock, a sort of crumbling stone, which makes excellent roads, soon dissolving and is easy to the horses feet, but it does not last so long as the lime stone, which tho' much harder yet it soon makes a smooth road, but when narrow and raised in the middle, as is the case here, it is slippery and dangerous at least for horses not accustomed to it. Over the rotten rock is a blackish firestone, called a whine stone, it most of it appears to me, to be of the granite kind, but with very small grains. I passed by a pleasant village in a little vale, from which it has the name of Glyn, and came to a spring on the shore, in which there is a very small fresh water shell-fish, of the wilk or turbinated kind, and a small limpet, no bigger than a vitch, sticking on the stones, which I never saw before in fresh water: but what is most remarkable about this well, on the shore, they find the Asteriae and Astroitae, some of them smaller than ever I met with before, but they are difficult to be found.

Larne is pleasantly situated at the north end of this bay, a point of land running out to the south east; directly south of which is the harbour for large vessels, where they are well defended against the weather; and that point is a most pleasant rising ground, on which there is an old Castle. Larne tho' a poor town, consists of a street


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not much less than half a mile in length, and a rivlet falling from the hills at one end, a race of it is brought along behind the houses, which is a great conveniency as well as beauty. They have a little linnen trade, a few fishing boats and salt works (as along the coast) of salt rock of Cheshire boiled with sea water. They have also some little traffick in sending out lime stone and furnishing the neighbouring parts with lime: near the ancient church there is a Mount, which I take to be of the monumental kind, and beyond this is a field, called the Chapel field, where they say are some marks of the foundation of an old Chapel.