BALLYROBERT covers 49.5 km² in Northern Ireland. With 53 historic sites and 6 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 55th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 9 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 31st percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 18.1 recorded sites — the 58th 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 BALLYROBERT
Of the 53 historic sites recorded, the most common are A.P. Site – Circular Cropmark (6, 11% of historic sites), Enclosure (3), and Rath; Part Of Rath Group (2). For A.P. Site – Circular Cropmarks, this is the 72nd 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 49.5 km², this gives a recorded density of 1.37 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments are distributed across approximately 0.02° of latitude and 0.05° of longitude within the ward, indicating dispersed rather than clustered placement.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| A.p. Site – Circular Cropmark | 6 | — |
| Enclosure | 3 | — |
| Rath; Part Of Rath Group | 2 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 28% of historic site records carry an ‘Unknown’ period attribution. The chronological breakdown above reflects only the dated subset.
Terrain and environment
With a mean elevation of 96m, this ward sits above the NI median (71th percentile), reaching 166m at the highest point. The terrain is broadly flat, with a mean slope of 2.7° (9th percentile across NI). Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.1 sits in the 85th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (84%), woodland (7%), and urban land (5%), giving a mixed agricultural and semi-natural landscape.
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. Bedrock composition is uniform (complexity index 0.00), 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 placename record for this ward is small — 12 names in total — but it does include 1 pre-Christian defensive placename. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Scheduled monuments in BALLYROBERT
Scheduled monuments are sites legally protected under the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, designated by the Historic Environment Division (HED).
| Monument | Type | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Rath Group (Area A) | Rath Group (Area A) | Early Medieval |
| Rath Group (Area B) | Rath Group (Area B) | Early Medieval |
| Motte: Shaw's Fort | Motte: Shaw'S Fort | Medieval |
| Multivallate rath and souterrain | Multivallate Rath And Souterrain | Iron Age |
| Rath | Rath | Early Medieval |
| Barrow | Barrow | Early Bronze Age |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – elliptical enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – large circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
Listed buildings in BALLYROBERT
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Ballypalady Road Doagh Co Antrim BT39 0QY | Record Only | 1840 – 1859 |
| The Palantine 1 Ballypalady Road Ballyclare County Antrim BT39 0QY | Record Only | 1800 – 1819 |
| Ballyclare Cemetery Lodge Doagh Road Ballyclare Co Antrim | Record Only | — |
| Chimney Dennison Industrial Estate Avondale Drive Ballyclare, Co Antrim BT39 | Record Only | — |
| Ballylinney Presbyterian Church Ballylinney Road Ballyclare Co Antrim BT38 9PB | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| Ballyclare Cemetery Ballyclare Co Antrim | Record Only | — |
| Ballyclare Railway Station 2 Hillhead Road Ballyclare Co Antrim BT39 9DS | Record Only | — |
| The Old Manse 105 Mill Road Ballyclare Co. Antrim BT39 9DZ | Record Only | — |
| 69 The Longshot Ballyclare Co Antrim BT39 0QX | Record Only | 1800 – 1819 |
Discover more in Antrim and Newtownabbey
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/