COMBER NORTH covers 17.3 km² in Northern Ireland. With 21 historic sites and 2 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 41st 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 8.4 recorded sites — the 43rd percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Neolithic 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 COMBER NORTH
Of the 21 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (3, 14% of historic sites), Standing Stone? (2), and Ap Cropmark – Possible Circular Enclosure (2). For Enclosures, this is the 27th percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Standing Stone?s, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 17.3 km², this gives a recorded density of 1.85 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 3 | — |
| Standing Stone? | 2 | — |
| Ap Cropmark – Possible Circular Enclosure | 2 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 19% of historic site records carry an ‘Unknown’ period attribution. The chronological breakdown above reflects only the dated subset.
Terrain and environment
A mean elevation of 20m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (10th percentile), reaching 54m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.7° (37th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.6 (61th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land-cover mosaic combines arable farmland (64%), improved grassland (19%), and urban land (11%), 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 Palaeozoic era (Permian 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. Bedrock composition is moderately varied (complexity index 0.57), with two or three geological units present within the ward boundary.
Placename evidence
This ward has only 6 placenames recorded across OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames, none of which fall into the diagnostic categories used for heritage analysis (ecclesiastical, defensive, Norse, Anglo-Norman, or Plantation-era). The remainder are generic Gaelic landscape forms that are common across Ireland and carry no specific period signal.
Scheduled monuments in COMBER NORTH
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Motte | Motte | Medieval |
| PILLBOX | Pillbox | Modern |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| AP Cropmark – Possible circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| AP Cropmark – Possible circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| AP Cropmark – Possibly associated with the unlocated site of Castlebeg medieval church? | Medieval | Religious |
| AP Cropmark – circular enclosures | Unknown | Unknown |
| AP Cropmark Complex- Possibly associated with the unlocated site of Castlebeg medieval church? | Medieval | Religious |
| AP Cropmark- Possible circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| AP Cropmark- Possible rath | Early Medieval | Defence |
| AP Cropmark- Rectilinear features | Unknown | Unknown |
| AP Cropmarks- Possible pits or barrows? | Unknown | Ritual/Funerary |
| Bronze Age Enclosure and Early Medieval Enclosure with associated features | Early Bronze Age | Unknown |
Listed buildings in COMBER NORTH
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Ballyrickard Bridge (formerly over railway) Moate Road Ballyrickard Comber Co. Down BT23 4XA | Record Only | 1840 – 1859 |
| The Moate 1 Moate Road Ballyrickard Newtownards Co. Down BT23 4XA | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| Ballyrickard House 3 Moate Road Ballyrickard Newtownards Co. Down BT23 4XA | Record Only | 1860 – 1879 |
| The Booten (East), 102 Newtownards Road Ballyrickard Newtownards Co. Down BT23 5LD | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| New cemetery lodge Newtownards Road Town Parks Comber Co. Down BT23 5? | Record Only | 1860 – 1879 |
| 2-8 Lower Crescent Town Parks Comber Co Down BT23 5BU | Record Only | 1840 – 1859 |
| Ballyhenry House 38 Ballyhenry Road Ballyhenry Major Comber Co Down BT23 5JZ | Record Only | 1860 – 1879 |
| Comber Primary School Darragh Road Comber Co Down BT23 5BX | Record Only | 1920 – 1939 |
| Former railway watch house 44 Newtownards Road Ballyhenry Minor Comber Co Down BT23 5LB | Record Only | 1840 – 1859 |
Discover more in Ards and North Down
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- Harbour
- Cronstown
- Holywood
- Ballygowan
- Rathmore
- Cairncastle — Mid and East Antrim
- Castlederg — Derry City and Strabane
- Collinbridge — Antrim and Newtownabbey
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/