KELLS covers 65.5 km² in Northern Ireland. With 30 historic sites and 3 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 50th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 16 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 44th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 14.3 recorded sites — the 53rd 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 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 KELLS
Of the 30 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (3, 10% of historic sites), Souterrain (Unlocated) (3), and Souterrain (2). For Enclosures, this is the 27th percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Souterrain (Unlocated)s, this is the 50th percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 65.5 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.75 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 3 | — |
| Souterrain (unlocated) | 3 | — |
| Souterrain | 2 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 58m sits around the NI median (48th percentile), reaching 119m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.5° (34th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.7 (63th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land cover is dominated by improved grassland (76%) and woodland (16%).
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 10% of the ward. Peat-bound ground preserves organic archaeological material that would not survive on aerated mineral soils. Bedrock composition is uniform (complexity index 0.00), with a single dominant geological unit underlying most of the ward. A uniform geology narrows the natural lithic-resource base available to past inhabitants.
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 17 placenames for this ward. Diagnostic heritage strata identified within these are: 1 ecclesiastical (cill-, teampall-, mainistir-, díseart-) and 3 Anglo-Norman (12th-14th c medieval planted names). 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 KELLS
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mound: The Trench | Mound: The Trench | Unknown |
| High-cross Fragment. Only the cross itself, located in St Saviour's Church of Ireland. | High-Cross Fragment. Only The Cross Itself, Located In St Saviour'S Church Of Ireland. | Unknown |
| Augustinian abbey and graveyard | Augustinian Abbey And Graveyard | Medieval |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| "Cross Hill" and "Preacher's Path" – Possible ecclesiastical site | Unknown | Religious |
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – water course? | Unknown | Unknown |
| AUGUSTINIAN ABBEY: KELLS ABBEY or TEMPLEMOYLE or DESERT OF CONNOR or ABBEY OF KELLIS | Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| BULLAUN | Early Medieval | Unknown |
| BULLAUN (unlocated) | Early Medieval | Unknown |
| CASTLE (O.S. memoir site; unlocated) | Medieval | Defence |
| COUNTERSCARP RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
| Connor Historic Settlement | Medieval | Domestic |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
Listed buildings in KELLS
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| The Valley 15 Valley Road Crevilly-Valley Td Ballymena BT42 2LX | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| CONNOR PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH PARKGATE ROAD CONNOR TL Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B | — |
| ST. SAVIOUR'S (COFI) CHURCH CHURCH ST. CONNOR TL Ballymena CO. ANTRIM | B | — |
| KELLS BRIDGE (OVER THE KELLS WATER) LIMINARY ROAD KELLS Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, GATES AND WALLING CHURCH ST. KELLS Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B | — |
| KELLS COTTAGE (AND RAILINGS) 2 GREENFIELD ROAD KELLS Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| "GREENFIELD" KELLS Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| KILDRUM HOUSE 75 SHANKBRIDGE ROAD KILDRUM TD KELLS Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| GATE LODGE AND GATE SCREEN OF KILDRUM HOUSE 61 SHANKBRIDGE ROAD KILDRUM TD KELLS Ballymena CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| SHANK BRIDGE KILDRUM BALLYMENA CO.ANTRIM | B+ | — |
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/