At the heart of the early settlement was the Diamond, with a street running southwest towards what is now a bridge but was once a ferry crossing point. This central area likely housed the twenty-one dwellings built for Sir Richard Hansard by 1611, forming the nucleus of the plantation town. The street running northwest from the town centre, past Ballyduff House, shows evidence of old burgage plots; a medieval system of land division that suggests this area may have accommodated the twenty-seven cottages also recorded in 1611.

According to a 1600 account, the settlement sat beside the river and was “encompassed by an old ditch”, a defensive earthwork that protected the early inhabitants. A contemporary map, possibly drawn to accompany this description and now held in Trinity College Dublin’s library, shows the outline of these fortifications. Archaeological surveys have found no surviving trace of this defensive ditch, though its former presence speaks to the uncertain times during which Lifford was established as a frontier town.

The Urban Survey notes that whilst the physical defences have vanished, the street pattern itself preserves the memory of seventeenth-century Lifford. The burgage plots, once narrow strips of land running back from the street frontage where townspeople could build homes, keep gardens, and conduct trade, remain visible in the modern town plan. This layout, common in plantation towns across Ulster, offers a glimpse into how English and Scottish settlers organised their new communities in early modern Ireland.