Somerset, Coleraine

Somerset was the Anglicised name for an Irish estate near Coleraine, on which a succession of country houses were built.

The formation of the estate dates back to the Plantation of Ulster, when it became the property of the Merchant Taylors' Company.

In the period after the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652, Col. John Gorges of Somerset, Coleraine was three times a member of parliament for the Counties of Derry, Donegal and Tyrone, before 1660.

[2] Another son Henry died in 1727, and his widow in 1729, and the Merchant Taylors' estate in Macosquin and Aghadowey parishes, with Somerset House, was sold.

[4] In the memoirs of Frederick Young by his daughter, Somerset appears as "a fine large property ... including a beautiful salmon leap on the River Bann", owned by "Tom Richardson" (the Rev.

[13] During the period of the Irish Land Acts, the estate was offered in 1894 for purchase to its tenants, and much of it was sold.

Map of 1622 (north is to the left), showing Coleraine on the River Bann , and to the west (i.e. below) the area allocated to the Merchant Taylors' Company
"A mile above Coleraine, the Bann, having borne the overflowings of Lough Neagh for twenty-five miles, falls over the salmon leap, a ledge thirteen feet high, where it meets salt water, and thence as a broad tidal stream, mingles with the ocean five miles farther." [ 12 ]