87 historic sites14 scheduled monuments71 listed buildings7 archaeological periods
LAGAN covers 131.9 km² in Northern Ireland. With 87 historic sites and 14 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 88th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 71 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 86th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 49.6 recorded sites — the 90th 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 7 archaeological periods, placing the ward in the 79th percentile NI-wide for chronological depth.
LAGAN boundary detailLAGAN in regional context
Heritage at a glance
Percentile rankings throughout this profile compare each ward only against the other 461 Northern Ireland wards.
87
Historic sites
86th percentile
14
Scheduled monuments
91st percentile
71
Listed buildings
86th percentile
1.30
Sites per km²
Population context
26
Persons per km²
25th percentile
49.6
Sites per 1,000 residents
90th percentile
3,466
Total residents (2021)
The recorded heritage of LAGAN
Of the 87 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (O.S. Memoir Site, Unlocated) (15, 17% of historic sites), Enclosure (14), and Rath (10). For Enclosure (O.S. Memoir Site, Unlocated)s, this is placing the ward in the top 5% nationally for this type. For Enclosures, this is the 81st percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 131.9 km², this gives a recorded density of 1.30 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments are distributed across approximately 0.04° of latitude and 0.10° of longitude within the ward, indicating dispersed rather than clustered placement.
Most common monument types
Type
Count
Description
Enclosure (o.s. Memoir Site, Unlocated)
15
—
Enclosure
14
—
Rath
10
—
Chronological distribution
Mesolithic
5
Early Bronze Age
2
Iron Age
36
Early Medieval
20
Medieval
1
Post Medieval
7
Modern
3
Unknown
13
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 67m sits around the NI median (53th percentile), reaching 154m at the highest point. The terrain is broadly flat, with a mean slope of 3.1° (19th percentile across NI). Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.0 sits in the 80th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (64%), arable farmland (25%), and woodland (8%), giving a mixed agricultural and semi-natural landscape.
Terrain measurements
Mean elevation66.7 m 54th pct
Max elevation153.6 m 63rd pct
Mean slope3.1° 20th pct
Wetness index (TWI)10.98 81st pct
Grassland64.0% 58th pct
Woodland7.8% 9th pct
Cropland24.9% 100th pct
Urban land3.0% 34th pct
Where this ward sits in NI
Elevation
54th
Slope
20th
Drainage
81st
Grassland
58th
Woodland
9th
Geology and preservation
The dominant bedrock formed during the Palaeozoic era (Permian 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 varied (complexity index 0.77, 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.
Bedrock eraPalaeozoic
Bedrock periodPermian
Surface depositsTill
Peat coverage0.0%
Bedrock complexity0.77
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 38 placenames for this ward. Diagnostic heritage strata identified within these are: 3 pre-Christian defensive (rath-, dún-, lios-, caiseal-) and 2 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.
Scheduled monuments are sites legally protected under the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, designated by the Historic Environment Division (HED).
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.
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)
Spotted an error? This dataset is updated continuously.
Email contact@danielkirkpatrick.co.uk with corrections, missing records, or suggestions for improvement.
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