BLEARY covers 42.8 km² in Northern Ireland. With 14 historic sites and 5 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 39th 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 5.9 recorded sites — the 38th 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 6 archaeological periods, around the NI median 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 BLEARY
Of the 14 historic sites recorded, the most common are Rath (1, 7% of historic sites), Tower: Schomberg'S Tower (1), and Stone Circle? Or Passage Tomb? (Unlocated) (1). For Raths, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For Tower: Schomberg'S Towers, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 42.8 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.68 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments occupy a compact area within the ward (less than 0.03° of geographic spread), indicating clustered placement.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | 1 | — |
| Tower: Schomberg's Tower | 1 | — |
| Stone Circle? Or Passage Tomb? (unlocated) | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 50m sits around the NI median (39th percentile), reaching 101m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.3° (26th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.8 (73th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (71%), woodland (18%), and arable farmland (6%), 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 moderately varied (complexity index 0.63), with two or three geological units present within the ward boundary.
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 15 placenames for this ward. None of the diagnostic heritage strata (ecclesiastical, defensive, Norse, Anglo-Norman, or Plantation-era) are represented; the recorded names are generic Gaelic landscape forms common throughout Ireland. 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.
Scheduled monuments in BLEARY
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 |
|---|---|---|
| WWII PILLBOX | Wwii Pillbox | Modern |
| WWII PILLPOX | Wwii Pillpox | Modern |
| WWII PILLBOX | Wwii Pillbox | Modern |
| WWII PILLBOX | Wwii Pillbox | Modern |
| WWII PILLBOX | Wwii Pillbox | Modern |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE: LIS NA GRILLY; THE FORT OF THE DAGGER (unlocated) | Iron Age | Defence |
| FINDSPOT of LOGBOAT | Unknown | Maritime |
| Historic Settlement Bleary | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| PILLBOX – DHP NO.223 | Modern | Defence |
| PILLBOX – DHP NO.224 | Modern | Defence |
| PILLBOX – DHP NO.228 | Modern | Defence |
| RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
| STONE CIRCLE? or PASSAGE TOMB? (unlocated) | Mesolithic | Ritual/Funerary |
| TOWER: SCHOMBERG'S TOWER | Unknown | Unknown |
Listed buildings in BLEARY
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Bloomvale House 171 Plantation Road Bleary Craigavon Co. Armagh BT63 5NN | B1 | 1780 – 1799 |
| 123 MOYALLAN ROAD BALLYDONAGHY PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B | — |
| 115 MOYALLAN ROAD BALLYDONAGHY PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B1 | — |
| 119 MOYALLAN ROAD PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B1 | — |
| HOLLYMOUNT 15 BALLYDUGAN ROAD GILFORD PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B1 | — |
| DRUMLYN HOUSE 124 MOYALLAN ROAD PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B1 | — |
| 138 GILFORD ROAD (AKA BANNVIEW HOUSE) BREAGH PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B1 | — |
| 121 MOYALLAN ROAD PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B2 | — |
| 25 Slopes Road Ballydugan Portadown Craigavon Co Down BT63 5NT | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| 117 MOYALLAN ROAD PORTADOWN CO.ARMAGH | B1 | — |
Discover more in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon
- Rathfriland
- Craigavon Centre
- Dromore
- Hamiltonsbawn
- Derrytrasna
- Waringstown
- Kernan
- Ballymoney East — Causeway Coast and Glens
- Bloomfield — Belfast
- Belvoir — Belfast
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/