CURRAN and INVER covers 14.0 km² in Northern Ireland. With 20 historic sites and 0 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 58th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 54 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 80th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 22.8 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 5 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 CURRAN and INVER
Of the 20 historic sites recorded, the most common are Rath (1, 5% of historic sites), C15Th Franciscan Friary & Medieval Church(Site Of); Modern Church & Graveyard: St. Cedma Of Ynver (1), and Tower-House: Olderfleete Castle (1). For Raths, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For C15Th Franciscan Friary & Medieval Church(Site Of); Modern Church & Graveyard: St. Cedma Of Ynvers, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 14.0 km², this gives a recorded density of 5.29 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | 1 | — |
| C15th Franciscan Friary & Medieval Church(site Of); Modern Church & Graveyard: St. Cedma Of Ynver | 1 | — |
| Tower-house: Olderfleete Castle | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 20% 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 17m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (8th percentile), reaching 87m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.1° (21th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.6 sits in the 95th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines open water (35%), urban land (28%), and improved grassland (23%), 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 open water.
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 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 placename record for this ward is small — 14 names in total — but it does include 5 Norse coastal placenames. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BATTLE SITE; 624 AD: BATTLE OF ARD CORAINN | Early Medieval | Commercial |
| Bronze Age occupation | Early Bronze Age | Unknown |
| C15th FRANCISCAN FRIARY & MEDIEVAL CHURCH(site of); MODERN CHURCH & GRAVEYARD: ST. CEDMA OF YNVER | Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| CASTLE: OLDERFLEET CASTLE or THE CURRAN CASTLE | Medieval | Defence |
| DEFENSIVE EARTHWORKS | Post-Medieval | Defence |
| Ditch features, Linear feature and Small Pits | Unknown | Defence |
| FINDSPOT OF HUMAN REMAINS | Unknown | Unknown |
| HISTORIC SETTLEMENT: LARNE or LATHERNE or LACHERNE or DUNMALYS | Medieval | Defence |
| HOUSES | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| MEDIEVAL CHURCH & GRAVEYARD (site of): INVERBERG or ST. MARY'S OF YNVER | Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
Listed buildings in CURRAN and INVER
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| St Cedma’s C of I Church Inver Road Larne Co Antrim | B+ | Pre 1600 |
| Inver Lodge Whitla’s Brae Larne Co Antrim BT40 3BY | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| War Memorial Off Inver Road Larne Co Antrim | B1 | 1920 – 1939 |
| Market Yard 2 Station Road Larne Co Antrim BT40 3AA | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Chaine Memorial Chaine Memorial Road Larne Co Antrim | B1 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Hamilton Fountain Chaine Memorial Road Larne Co Antrim | B1 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Methodist Church Curran Road Larne Co Antrim | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Front gate lodge to Drumalis Retreat Centre 49 Glenarm Road Larne Co Antrim BT40 1DT | B1 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Drumalis Retreat Centre 47 Glenarm Road Larne Co Antrim | B+ | 1860 – 1879 |
| Clyde Valley Memorial Chaine Memorial Road Larne Co Antrim | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
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/