CALEDON covers 276.2 km² in Northern Ireland. With 60 historic sites and 8 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 86th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 90 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 91st percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 39.9 recorded sites — the 85th 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 CALEDON
Of the 60 historic sites recorded, the most common are Rath (11, 18% of historic sites), Enclosure (11), and Crannog (3). For Raths, this is the 71st percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Enclosures, this is the 72nd percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 276.2 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.57 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments are distributed across approximately 0.12° of latitude and 0.08° of longitude within the ward, indicating dispersed rather than clustered placement.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | 11 | — |
| Enclosure | 11 | — |
| Crannog | 3 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 67m sits around the NI median (53th percentile), reaching 156m at the highest point. The terrain is consistently steep, with a mean slope of 5.5° (82th percentile across NI). The Topographic Wetness Index of 9.9 (22th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land cover is dominated by improved grassland (82%) and woodland (13%). In overall character, this is steeply-sloping terrain at modest elevation, with land use dominated by improved grassland.
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Palaeozoic era (Carboniferous period). Ancient sedimentary or metamorphic rock dating to before the age of dinosaurs; the resulting landscape has been long-stable enough to host every period of human activity. Peat covers 3% of the ward — a minor share, but where it occurs it can preserve organic finds in good condition. Bedrock composition is varied (complexity index 0.90, on a 0-1 Simpson-style scale), with multiple geological units within the ward boundary. Geologically diverse wards historically offered a wider range of stone types for building, toolmaking, and quarrying — a relevant factor when interpreting the material culture of nearby sites.
Scheduled monuments in CALEDON
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Crannog | Crannog | Iron Age |
| Rath | Rath | Early Medieval |
| Rath | Rath | Early Medieval |
| Caledon Cross | Caledon Cross | Unknown |
| Sweat House | Sweat House | Unknown |
| Crannog | Crannog | Iron Age |
| Fragment of Romanesque arch | Fragment Of Romanesque Arch | Unknown |
| 19th-century Beam engine with engine house and chimney base | 19Th-Century Beam Engine With Engine House And Chimney Base | Modern |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – double-ditched enclosure | Iron Age | Defence |
| A.P. SITE – large oval enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – small circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| ARCHITECTURAL FRAGMENT | Medieval | Unknown |
| BATTLE SITE, 1646 | Post-Medieval | Unknown |
| BATTLE SITE: BATTLE OF BENBURB | Post-Medieval | Unknown |
| CAIRN? | Mesolithic | Ritual/Funerary |
| CASTLE: KINARD CASTLE or GONN ARD | Medieval | Defence |
| CHURCH & 7 CROSSES (3 removed to other sites – c.f. Tyr 71:1 & Arm 11:3 & 15:2) | Early Medieval | Religious |
Listed buildings in CALEDON
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Alexander House Main Street Caledon Co Tyrone BT68 4TZ | B1 | 1760 – 1779 |
| 6 BANK TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
| 2 ESTATE TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
| BATTLEFORD BRIDGE BATTLEFORD ROAD CARROWBEG/ CORR/ AUGHANTARRAGH CO.TYRONE | B2 | — |
| 1 BANK TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
| 2 BANK TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
| 3 BANK TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
| 4 BANK TERRACE MAIN STREET CALEDON CO TYRONE | B+ | — |
| 5 BANK TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
| 1 ESTATE TERRACE MAIN ST. CALEDON CO.TYRONE | B+ | — |
Discover more in Mid Ulster
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- Ballysaggart
- Moygashel
- Lissan
- Clady — Antrim and Newtownabbey
- Chichester Park — Belfast
- Curran And Inver — Mid and East Antrim
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/