KILKEEL covers 17.6 km² in Northern Ireland. With 11 historic sites and 1 scheduled monument on record, the ward sits at the 57th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 61 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 82nd percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 18.9 recorded sites — the 59th percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Iron Age through to the Modern 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 KILKEEL
Of the 11 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (1, 9% of historic sites), Abbey & Graveyard: Mourne Abbey (1), and Rath (1). For Enclosures, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For Abbey & Graveyard: Mourne Abbeys, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 17.6 km², this gives a recorded density of 4.15 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 1 | — |
| Abbey & Graveyard: Mourne Abbey | 1 | — |
| Rath | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 18% 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 23m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (14th percentile). The terrain is broadly flat, with a mean slope of 3.0° (18th percentile across NI). Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.2 sits in the 89th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (71%), urban land (19%), and woodland (6%), 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 improved grassland.
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Palaeozoic era (Silurian 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 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 placename record for this ward is small — 5 names in total — but it does include 1 pre-Christian defensive and 2 ecclesiastical placenames. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Scheduled monuments in KILKEEL
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | Rath | Early Medieval |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – GRAVEYARD & cropmark | Unknown | Ritual/Funerary |
| ABBEY & GRAVEYARD: MOURNE ABBEY | Modern | Ritual/Funerary |
| COUNTERSCARP RATH: DUNNAVAL | Early Medieval | Defence |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| Historic Settlement Kilkeel | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| NON-ANTIQUITY – natural hollow | Unknown | Unknown |
| RAISED RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
| RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
| Workhouse | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| Workhouse Burial Ground | Post-Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
Listed buildings in KILKEEL
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Kilkeel Presbyterian Church 28 Newcastle Street Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4AF | Record Only | 1880 – 1899 |
| 4 Newry Street Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4DN | B1 | 1780 – 1799 |
| 6-8 Newry Street Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4DN | B1 | 1780 – 1799 |
| Kilkeel Credit Union / former Munster and Leinster Bank 20 Newry Street Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4DN | B1 | 1900 – 1919 |
| Christ Church (C of I) Newry Street Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4DN | B1 | 1800 – 1819 |
| Sexton’s House Christ Church (C of I) Newry Street Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4DN | B2 | 1920 – 1939 |
| 1 Coastguard Terrace The Harbour Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4AU | B2 | 1900 – 1919 |
| 2 Coastguard Terrace The Harbour Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4AU | B2 | 1900 – 1919 |
| 3 Coastguard Terrace The Harbour Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4AU | B2 | 1900 – 1919 |
| 4 Coastguard Terrace The Harbour Kilkeel Newry Co Down BT34 4AU | B2 | 1900 – 1919 |
Discover more in Newry, Mourne and Down
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/