HOLYWOOD covers 14.6 km² in Northern Ireland. With 10 historic sites and 3 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 84th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 137 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 97th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 37.6 recorded sites — the 84th 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 HOLYWOOD
Of the 10 historic sites recorded, the most common are Rath (1, 10% of historic sites), Mesolithic Occupation Site (1), and Ring-Ditch (1). For Raths, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For Mesolithic Occupation Sites, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 14.6 km², this gives a recorded density of 10.27 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | 1 | — |
| Mesolithic Occupation Site | 1 | — |
| Ring-ditch | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
With a mean elevation of 120m, this ward sits above the NI median (79th percentile), reaching 198m at the highest point. The terrain is consistently steep, with a mean slope of 5.5° (83th percentile across NI). The ward is well-drained, with a Topographic Wetness Index of 9.7 (13th NI percentile) — characteristic of upland or steeply-sloping ground that sheds water rapidly. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (56%), woodland (28%), and urban land (11%), giving a mixed agricultural and semi-natural landscape. In overall character, this is an upland landscape of steep, elevated terrain, with land use dominated by improved grassland.
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Palaeozoic era (Ordovician 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 0.46), with two or three geological units present within the ward boundary.
Placename evidence
This ward has only 3 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 HOLYWOOD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Church: Holywood Priory | Church: Holywood Priory | Medieval |
| Windmill Stump IHR 02511 'The Martello Tower' | Windmill Stump Ihr 02511 'The Martello Tower' | Post-Medieval |
| Motte | Motte | Medieval |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| CHURCH: HOLYWOOD PRIORY | Early Medieval | Religious |
| HISTORIC SETTLEMENT: HOLYWOOD | Early Medieval | Domestic |
| HOLYWOOD MOTTE | Medieval | Defence |
| House | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| MESOLITHIC OCCUPATION SITE | Mesolithic | Unknown |
| MOUND | Unknown | Unknown |
| RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
| RING-DITCH | Mesolithic | Defence |
| Rectangular and Oval feature | Post-Medieval | Unknown |
| WINDMILL STUMP – IHR 02511 'The Martello Tower' | Post-Medieval | Defence |
Listed buildings in HOLYWOOD
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| 4 High Street Holywood County Down BT18 9AZ ***See General comments*** | B2 | 1780 – 1799 |
| First Holywood Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church High Street Holywood Co Down BT18 9AQ | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Rollo House 6 High Street Holywood Co Down BT18 9AZ | B2 | 1780 – 1799 |
| High Street Presbyterian Church High Street Holywood Co Down BT18 9AE | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Public Library (Former Lower Sullivan School) High Street HOLYWOOD CO. DOWN | B1 | — |
| Clifden House 15 Bangor Road Holywood Co Down BT18 0NU | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| 4 Tudor Park Holywood Co Down BT19 0NX | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| 3 Tudor Park Holywood Co Down BT19 0NX | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Tudor Hall 5 Tudor Park Holywood Co Down BT18 0NX | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Tudor House 6 Tudor Park Holywood Co Down BT18 0NX | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
Discover more in Ards and North Down
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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/