Town defences in Lifford

The physical layout of the town is described in the Urban Survey as 'The core of the seventeenth century Lifford was concentrated on the Diamond and on the street running SW from it towards the modern bridge, then the site of a ferry. It was presumably in this area that the twentyone houses, built for Sir Richard Hansard by 1611, were located. The presence of a burgage plot pattern on the street running NW from the town, past Ballyduff House, suggests that it too may be of seventeenth century origin. Indeed it may have been the location of the 27 cottages referred to in 1611. An account of the settlement, written in 1600, describes it as lying beside the river and "encompassed by an old ditch" (CSPI 1600-1, 93). An outline of these defences is shown on a map, prepared perhaps to accompany this account, now in the library of Trinity College Dublin (Ms. 1209 (17)). No trace of this ditch now survives' (Bradley & Dunne 1989, 53-4).