Two centuries before the Ordnance Survey began mapping Ireland, someone had already drawn Portrush — and the map that survives tells a genuinely different story from the one usually told about the town.
Two competing theories
Scholars disagree on exactly when the map was made. Historian Ernest Sandford, writing in the Bann Disc journal in 2006, attributes it to Sir Thomas Phillips and dates it to 1605, part of a scheme to fortify Portrush as an English military and naval base controlling the north coast. Archaeologist Richard B. Warner, writing in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology in 2019–20, argues instead for 1580, commissioned by Sir John Perrott to help contain the influence of Sorley Boy McDonnell of nearby Dunluce Castle. Either way, it’s a genuinely early snapshot of a place most visitors assume has no recorded history before the Victorian resort boom.
What it actually shows
The map depicts 16 simple thatched cottages, without windows or chimneys, clustered in the sand-hill area roughly where Glenmanus and Crocknamack sit today — a building style associated with the native Irish population of the time. That sits oddly against other historical claims (covered on our Portrush Before Portrush page) that a sizeable community once occupied the promontory itself, with a church whose taxable value reportedly exceeded Dunluce’s or Coleraine’s — a real discrepancy the source material leaves unresolved, whether through decline, abandonment, or simply the mapmaker’s choice of what to include.
Elsewhere the map shows a defensive ditch cut across the promontory’s narrow neck (not archaeologically confirmed since), a castle with gateway walls but no interior buildings marked — possibly sited near today’s Antrim Gardens, later quarried away for harbour construction between 1827 and 1835 — a partly ruined church (2005 excavations found no surviving foundations), a pool or marsh near today’s tennis courts, and two large mounds at Reviggerly whose origin is unknown and which no longer exist. Off the coast, an armed English ship flies the flag of St George — possibly recording a real Elizabethan naval visit, or simply artistic license on the mapmaker’s part.
It’s a genuinely rare document — a real, scholarly-verified window into a Portrush that existed long before the Victorian railway, harbour, and hotel boom reshaped the promontory into the town visitors recognise today.