CASTLE covers 3.9 km² in Northern Ireland. With 21 historic sites and 4 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 65th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 61 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 82nd percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 22.4 recorded sites — the 65th percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Iron Age through to the Post-Medieval period, spanning 3 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 CASTLE
Of the 21 historic sites recorded, the most common are Medieval Parish Church, Post-Med. & Modern Church & Graveyard: St Nicholas' Church, St Nicholas Of Cragfergus (1, 5% of historic sites), Fortified House Built On Franciscan Friary: Joymount (1), and Enclosure (1). For Medieval Parish Church, Post-Med. & Modern Church & Graveyard: St Nicholas' Church, St Nicholas Of Cragfergus, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For Fortified House Built On Franciscan Friary: Joymounts, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 3.9 km², this gives a recorded density of 22.05 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Medieval Parish Church, Post-med. & Modern Church & Graveyard: St Nicholas' Church, St Nicholas Of Cragfergus | 1 | — |
| Fortified House Built On Franciscan Friary: Joymount | 1 | — |
| Enclosure | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
A mean elevation of 10m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (2th percentile). 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 87th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines urban land (59%), woodland (21%), and improved grassland (14%), 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 urban land.
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Mesozoic era (Triassic period). Rock formed during the age of dinosaurs; in NI this typically appears as Triassic mudstones and Jurassic clays now buried beneath younger deposits. 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 — 8 names in total — but it does include 3 Norse coastal placenames. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Scheduled monuments in CASTLE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Part of town walls | Part Of Town Walls | Unknown |
| TOWN WALLS (JOYMOUNT) | Town Walls (Joymount) | Unknown |
| CARRICKFERGUS TOWN WALL (PART OF) | Carrickfergus Town Wall (Part Of) | Unknown |
| Joymount Orchard Wall Remains | Joymount Orchard Wall Remains | Unknown |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BOUNDARY WALL of JOYMOUNT GARDENS | Post-Medieval | Civil |
| C17th SETTLEMENT SITE: ANTRIM STREET & MEDIEVAL HOUSE & PROPERTY BOUNDARIES, CF 26 | Medieval | Domestic |
| CARRICKFERGUS CASTLE | Medieval | Defence |
| CARRICKFERGUS GAS WORKS (IHR site – see HB 22/8/20 for details) | Post-Medieval | Industrial |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| EXCAVATION SITE – CF 18 – Medieval features & post-medieval features & horn kerb; modern structures. | Medieval | Domestic |
| EXCAVATION SITE – CF 20 – Medieval town ditch, post-med. town wall, ditch & structures | Medieval | Defence |
| EXCAVATION SITE – CF 23 – Malting kiln (17th c), medieval occupation & post-med. town wall. | Medieval | Agriculture |
| EXCAVATION SITE – CF 24 – medieval occupation site | Medieval | Unknown |
| EXCAVATION SITE – CF 27 – C16th town ditch & C17th town wall & bastion. | Medieval | Defence |
Listed buildings in CASTLE
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gill's Almhouses 32a – 32b Ellis Street Carrickfergus Co Antrim BT38 8AY | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Gill's Almhouses 34a – 34b Ellis Street Carrickfergus Co Antrim BT38 8AY | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Gill's Almhouses 36a – 36b Ellis Street Carrickfergus Co Antrim BT38 8AY | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Maritime Cottage 2 Belfast Road Carrickfergus BT38 8BU | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Rocklands House 2 Wesley Court Belfast Road Carrickfergus BT38 8HS | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland Church Lancasterian Street Carrickfergus Co. Antrim BT38 7FH | A | Pre 1600 |
| Carrickfergus Railway Station 10 Victoria Street Carrickfergus Co. Antrim BT38 8AQ | B1 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Carrickfergus Borough Council Town Hall Joymount Carrickfergus Co. Antrim BT38 7DL | B+ | 1760 – 1779 |
| King William III Pier The Harbour Carrickfergus Co Antrim BT38 | B1 | 1650 – 1699 |
| Former Radar School Albert Edward Pier The Harbour Carrickfergus Co Antrim BT38 | B2 | 1960 – 1979 |
Discover more in Mid and East Antrim
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/