The Ulster plantation scheme devised in the early seventeenth century was the first to contain formal plans detailing the establishment of a network of towns across the recently seized lands. Over a relatively short period of time and virtually from nought a network of towns emerged dramatically transforming Ulster’s landscape, economy and society. These plantation towns with their distinctive form and assemblage of colonial buildings dominating their streetscapes were to become key components of the cultural landscape simultaneously reflecting, legitimising and naturalising the new socio-economic and political order that had been imposed on Ulster. Today, four centuries after their conceiving these towns remain intriguing components of the cultural landscape providing a potent field of study for geographers, archaeologists and historians, concerned with the colonial strategy of urban development.
This paper provides an overview of some of the key concepts which informed colonial urban development. The changing locations and numbers of towns proposed between 1609 and 1611 will be traced and accounted for. By 1629, sixteen locations – most already fulfilled a range of proto-urban functions - had been selected for development by the colonial powers and had been granted charters. A reading of the impressive fortifications, planned streets and market places alongside the central sites afforded colonial administrative buildings and churches reveals the strategic use of landscape by colonial urban developers as a medium in propagating colonial ideals of ‘civility’ and order.