CASTLEDERG covers 66.8 km² in Northern Ireland. With 27 historic sites and 5 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 59th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 44 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 74th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 22.6 recorded sites — the 66th percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Mesolithic through to the Post-Medieval period, spanning 4 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 CASTLEDERG
Of the 27 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (6, 22% of historic sites), Standing Stone (5), and Enclosure & ?Souterrain (1). For Enclosures, this is the 53rd percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Standing Stones, this is the 59th percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 66.8 km², this gives a recorded density of 1.14 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments occupy a compact area within the ward (less than 0.02° of geographic spread), indicating clustered placement.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 6 | — |
| Standing Stone | 5 | — |
| Enclosure & ?souterrain | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
With a mean elevation of 103m, this ward sits above the NI median (74th percentile), reaching 201m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.5° (32th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.8 (69th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land cover is dominated by improved grassland (79%) and woodland (14%).
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Neoproterozoic era. Late Pre-Cambrian rock laid down before the Cambrian explosion of life — a stable, long-eroded basement geology. Bedrock composition is moderately varied (complexity index 0.59), with two or three geological units present within the ward boundary.
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 16 placenames for this ward. Of those, 3 fall into the ecclesiastical category (cill-, teampall-, mainistir-, díseart-) — the only diagnostic heritage stratum identified beyond the generic Gaelic landscape substrate. 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
Scheduled monuments in CASTLEDERG
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Standing stone: the White Stone | Standing Stone: The White Stone | Early Bronze Age |
| Bawn: castlederg Castle | Bawn: Castlederg Castle | Post-Medieval |
| Standing stone | Standing Stone | Early Bronze Age |
| Wedgebtomb, 'Todds Den' (area surrounding the state care monument) | Wedgebtomb, 'Todds Den' (Area Surrounding The State Care Monument) | Unknown |
| State Care Portal Tomb | State Care Portal Tomb | Neolithic |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| CASTLE: CASTLE GORE | Unknown | Defence |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE & ?SOUTERRAIN | Early Medieval | Defence |
| FINDSPOT of GOLD BRACELET | Mesolithic | Unknown |
| FORTIFIED HOUSE & BAWN: CASTLEDERG CASTLE | Post-Medieval | Defence |
Listed buildings in CASTLEDERG
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Castlederg Bridge, Castlegore Road, Castlederg, Co Tyrone BT81 7PU | A | 1820 – 1839 |
| Castlederg Methodist Church The Diamond Castlederg Co.Tyrone BT81 7AR | Record Only | 1860 – 1879 |
| 1 Upper Strabane Road, Castlederg, Co Tyrone, BT81 7BG | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| 17 Main Street (including 1 The Entry) Castlederg, Co Tyrone, BT81 7AS | Record Only | 1860 – 1879 |
| Kilclean Bridge, Barleyhill Road, Castlederg, Co Tyrone | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Derg Parish Church, 13 Main Street, Castlederg, Co Tyrone BT81 7AY | B+ | 1720 – 1739 |
| 7 Killeter Road Castlederg Co Tyrone BT81 7BR | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| 8-14 Castlefinn Road, Churchtown, Castlederg, Co Tyrone, BT81 7BT | A | 1860 – 1879 |
| Ulster Bank, 27 Main Street, Castlederg, Co Tyrone, BT81 7AU | B1 | 1860 – 1879 |
| 19-21 Main Street Castlederg, Co Tyrone, BT81 7AS | B1 | 1860 – 1879 |
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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/