BALLYMAGUIGAN covers 129.9 km² in Northern Ireland. With 38 historic sites and 0 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 49th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 10 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 33rd percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 11.8 recorded sites — the 50th percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Mesolithic through to the Modern period, spanning 7 archaeological periods, placing the ward in the 79th percentile NI-wide for chronological depth.
Heritage at a glance
Percentile rankings throughout this profile compare each ward only against the other 461 Northern Ireland wards.
Population context
The recorded heritage of BALLYMAGUIGAN
Of the 38 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (O.S. Memoir Site, Unlocated) (5, 13% of historic sites), Enclosure (3), and Rath (2). For Enclosure (O.S. Memoir Site, Unlocated)s, this is the 45th percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Enclosures, this is the 27th percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 129.9 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.37 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure (o.s. Memoir Site, Unlocated) | 5 | — |
| Enclosure | 3 | — |
| Rath | 2 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 16% of historic site records carry an ‘Unknown’ period attribution. The chronological breakdown above reflects only the dated subset.
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 26m sits around the NI median (19th percentile), reaching 92m at the highest point. The terrain is broadly flat, with a mean slope of 2.4° (4th percentile across NI). Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.7 sits in the 96th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (64%), open water (16%), and woodland (10%), giving a mixed agricultural and semi-natural landscape. In overall character, this is low-lying, gently-sloping terrain — characteristic of NI's lowland basins and coastal plains, with land use dominated by improved grassland.
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Cainozoic era (Palaeogene period). Relatively young rock formed in the last 66 million years. In Ulster, Cainozoic basalt — the lava that created the Antrim Plateau and Giant's Causeway — dominates much of the eastern landscape. Peat covers 6% of the ward — a minor share, but where it occurs it can preserve organic finds in good condition. Bedrock composition is uniform (complexity index 0.16), with a single dominant geological unit underlying most of the ward. A uniform geology narrows the natural lithic-resource base available to past inhabitants.
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 18 placenames for this ward. Diagnostic heritage strata identified within these are: 1 pre-Christian defensive (rath-, dún-, lios-, caiseal-) and 1 ecclesiastical (cill-, teampall-, mainistir-, díseart-). Note: Irish-language (name_ga) forms are recorded for roughly half of NI placenames in the combined sources, so anglicised forms whose Irish original could belong to multiple categories may be misclassified.
Placename categories
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| BRONZE AGE PITS ANF FOOD VESEL SHERDS | Early Bronze Age | Industrial |
| CASTLE (site of): ANNAGHMORE CASTLE, CASTLE HILL | Unknown | Defence |
| CRANNOG | Early Medieval | Defence |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE (O.S. memoir site, unlocated) | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE (O.S. memoir site, unlocated) | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE (O.S. memoir site, unlocated) | Iron Age | Unknown |
Listed buildings in BALLYMAGUIGAN
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Thatch Bar 116 Hillhead Road Castledawson Magherafelt Co Londonderry BT45 8ET | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| NEW BRIDGE THE CREAGH DERRYGARVE CASTLEDAWSON Magherafelt CO.LONDONDERRY | B1 | — |
| ST. JAMES' R C CHURCH 140 AUGHRIM ROAD DERRYGARVE MAGHERAFELT CO.LONDONDERRY | B | — |
| Gracefield C of I Church Ballymaguigan Road Gracefield Ballymaguigan Magherafelt Co Londonderry | B2 | 1760 – 1779 |
| ST. JOHN'S CHURCH (PARISH OF WOODSCHAPEL) LISNAMORROW MAGHERAFELT CO.LONDONDERRY | B | — |
| LISNAMORROW HOUSE CARRALOAN ROAD LISNAMORROW MAGHERAFELT CO.LONDONDERRY | B1 | — |
| AUGHRIM HOUSE 97 AUGHRIM ROAD MAGHERAFELT CO.LONDONDERRY | B | — |
| GLENBROOK HOUSE 73 CASTLEDAWSON ROAD POLEPATRICK Magherafelt CO.DERRY BT45 7DW | B1 | — |
| TEMPLE OF LIBERTY, LEARNING AND SELECT AMUSEMENT CREAGH ROAD TOOMEBRIDGE CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| ?22a Gracefield Road Gracefield Ballymaguigan Magherafelt Co Londonderry BT45 6LD | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
Discover more in Mid Ulster
- Ballysaggart
- Castlecaulfield
- Pomeroy
- Washing Bay
- Castledawson
- Swatragh
- Glebe
- Braidwater — Mid and East Antrim
- Beragh — Fermanagh and Omagh
- Banbridge North — Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon
See all 462 wards in the Northern Ireland Heritage Tool.
Want a deeper view?
Grounding History: 10 Maps of Northern Ireland’s Past
A spatial history report bringing together analysis of all 462 wards into one place through 10 high-quality maps — covering monument density, archaeological periods, placename heritage, terrain, wetland, and the historic landscape at first survey.
About this profile
What is a ward?
A ward is the smallest electoral and statistical geography used by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). The boundaries used here are the 2014 NISRA / OSNI Wards (462 across Northern Ireland), each typically covering 1-700 km² and a population of a few thousand. Wards do not align with parishes, townlands, or any historic administrative unit — they are a modern statistical convenience, used here only as a fixed spatial frame within which to summarise heritage records.
What counts as a site?
Three distinct heritage record types are reported separately, not combined: (1) Historic Sites — entries in the Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record (NISMR), the inventory of recorded archaeological sites and findspots, dated from prehistoric to early-modern; (2) Scheduled Monuments — sites legally protected under the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects (NI) Order 1995 and maintained by the Historic Environment Division (HED); (3) Listed Buildings — buildings of architectural or historic interest protected under the Planning Act (NI) 2011 and graded A, B+, B1, B2, or Record-Only by HED. A site appearing in more than one register is counted in each register independently.
Editorial principles
These ward profiles describe evidence, not history. They report what is recorded, not what occurred. Where the data is ambiguous, we say so. We do not infer historical processes — population movements, settlement expansion, periods of decline — from patterns in the record. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: in Northern Ireland, where antiquarian survey was uneven and modern excavation is geographically biased, a gap in the record almost always reflects the limits of recording rather than a genuine historical absence. We mark such gaps explicitly where they appear in the data.
Limits of coverage and known caveats
Several caveats apply to every ward profile: (1) NISMR coverage is uneven across NI — some areas (notably parts of the south-east and the Belfast urban fringe) have been more intensively surveyed than others, so a low recorded site count does not reliably indicate a low past density of activity; (2) period attributions in NISMR are often 'Unknown', and chronological breakdowns reported here reflect only the dated subset; (3) placename classification depends on the Irish-language form (name_ga), which is recorded for approximately 50% of NI placenames in the combined sources, so ecclesiastical and pre-Christian counts may be understated where anglicised forms remain unparsed; (4) terrain percentile ranks compare each ward only to the other 461 NI wards; they are not absolute thresholds. For absence-dominant land cover categories (wetland, water, cropland), percentile ranks are suppressed below 1% raw value, since the ranking of zero-value wards is not meaningful.
Data sources (11)
- Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record (NISMR) https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/articles/nismr-public-mapviewer
- HED Scheduled Monuments Dataset https://www.opendatani.gov.uk/@historic-environment-division/scheduled-monuments-northern-ireland
- HED Historic Buildings Record https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/topics/historic-environment/listed-buildings
- OSNI OS Open Names (Northern Ireland) https://www.opendatani.gov.uk/@ordnance-survey-of-northern-ireland/osni-open-data—50k-gazetteer
- Logainm — Placenames Database of Ireland https://www.logainm.ie/
- GeoNames https://www.geonames.org/
- Census 2021 (Northern Ireland) https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/2021-census
- OSNI Open Data — Largescale Boundaries https://www.opendatani.gov.uk/@ordnance-survey-of-northern-ireland/osni-open-data-largescale-boundaries-wards-2012
- Copernicus GLO-30 DEM https://spacedata.copernicus.eu/collections/copernicus-digital-elevation-model
- ESA WorldCover https://esa-worldcover.org/
- GSNI 1:250,000 Geology https://www.bgs.ac.uk/geological-data/maps/