CRANFIELD covers 173.8 km² in Northern Ireland. With 48 historic sites and 1 scheduled monument on record, the ward sits at the 54th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 13 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 39th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 20.0 recorded sites — the 61st 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 CRANFIELD
Of the 48 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (20, 42% of historic sites), A.P. Site – Cropmark (5), and Uncisted Urn Burial (2). For Enclosures, this is the 89th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For A.P. Site – Cropmarks, this is the 40th percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 173.8 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.36 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 20 | — |
| A.p. Site – Cropmark | 5 | — |
| Uncisted Urn Burial | 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
Mean elevation of 40m sits around the NI median (32th percentile), with a maximum of 148m giving the ward meaningful vertical relief. The terrain is broadly flat, with a mean slope of 1.7° (1th percentile across NI). Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 12.3 sits in the 98th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land cover is dominated by open water (47%) and improved grassland (45%).
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. Peat covers 5% of the ward — a minor share, but where it occurs it can preserve organic finds in good condition. Bedrock composition is varied (complexity index 0.93, 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.
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 27 placenames for this ward. Diagnostic heritage strata identified within these are: 1 pre-Christian defensive (rath-, dún-, lios-, caiseal-) and 1 ecclesiastical (cill-, teampall-, mainistir-, díseart-). 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 CRANFIELD
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 | Standing Stone | Early Bronze Age |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – large enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| CHURCH or GRAVEYARD & BULLAUN: DRUMMAUL or DROMMAULE or SANCTAE BRIGIDAE DE DRUIMAULA | Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| CHURCH; GRAVEYARD; HOLY WELL; CROSS & PENAL SITE: CRANFIELD CHURCH or CHURCHTOWN or CREWILL | Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| COUNTERSCARP RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
Listed buildings in CRANFIELD
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Bridge over railway cutting at Dunmore Park Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Seymours Bridge School Ahoghill Road Randalstown Co. Antrim BT41 3DJ | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| 124 Staffordstown Road Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3LH | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Drummaul Old Graveyard Located to west of 169 Ahoghill Road Coolsythe, Randalstown, Co. Antrim BT41 3EY | Record Only | 1650 – 1699 |
| 169 Ahoghill Road Coolsythe Randalstown Co. Antrim BT41 3EY | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| The Hill 56 Portglenone Road Randalstown Co Antrim BT41 3EG | Record Only | 1900 – 1919 |
| Fern Bank 66 Portglenone Road Randalstown BT41 3EG | Record Only | 1880 – 1899 |
| 24 Tannaghmore Road Randalstown Co. Antrim BT41 3HE | Record Only | 1820 – 1839 |
| Claremont Cottage 34 Creggan Road Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3LN | Record Only | 1840 – 1859 |
| Henry Memorial Cranfield Graveyard Cranfield Road Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim | Record Only | 1720 – 1739 |
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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/