LOUGHGALL covers 205.8 km² in Northern Ireland. With 54 historic sites and 4 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 85th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 99 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 93rd percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 28.6 recorded sites — the 73rd 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.
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 LOUGHGALL
Of the 54 historic sites recorded, the most common are Rath (4, 7% of historic sites), A.P. Site – Circular Enclosure (3), and Enclosure (2). For Raths, this is the 31st percentile among NI wards that record this type. For A.P. Site – Circular Enclosures, this is the 57th percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 205.8 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.76 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | 4 | — |
| A.p. Site – Circular Enclosure | 3 | — |
| Enclosure | 2 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 27m sits around the NI median (20th percentile), reaching 74m at the highest point. Mean slope is 4.0° (47th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.5 (54th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land cover is dominated by improved grassland (76%) and woodland (18%).
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 27% of the ward. Peat-bound ground preserves organic archaeological material that would not survive on aerated mineral soils. 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.
Placename evidence
The combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 87 placenames for this ward. Diagnostic heritage strata identified within these are: 3 pre-Christian defensive (rath-, dún-, lios-, caiseal-), 6 ecclesiastical (cill-, teampall-, mainistir-, díseart-), and 1 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 LOUGHGALL
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Crannog in Lough Gall | Crannog In Lough Gall | Iron Age |
| Rath | Rath | Early Medieval |
| Church: Loughgall | Church: Loughgall | Unknown |
| Castle and enclosure | Castle And Enclosure | Iron Age |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| BATTLE SITE | Unknown | Unknown |
| BATTLE SITE, 1119 AD (unlocated) | Early Medieval | Unknown |
| BAWN & SETTLEMENT SITE | Post-Medieval | Defence |
| BURIAL & URNS (unlocated) | Mesolithic | Ritual/Funerary |
| BURNT MOUND / FULACHT FIADH | Middle-Late Bronze Age | Agriculture |
| Burnt area and Sub-Circular feature | Unknown | Unknown |
Listed buildings in LOUGHGALL
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Footbridge Manor House demesne Manor Farm Loughgall Co Armagh | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| THE SACRED HEART RC CHURCH(AKA ST.COLUMBA'S) 218 CLONMORE ROAD DUNGANNON CO.TYRONE | B | — |
| CLONMORE BRIDGE CLONMORE KILLYMAN DUNGANNON CO.TYRONE | B2 | — |
| DERRYESKER HOUSE 106 Black Island Road DUNGANNON CO.TYRONE | B1 | — |
| EDEN VILLA 74 CLOVENEDEN ROAD LOUGHGALL CO ARMAGH | B1 | — |
| LOUGHGALL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CLOVEN EDEN Loughgall CO.ARMAGH | B | — |
| TULLYROAN BRIDGE TULLYROAN CORNER DUNGANNON CO.TYRONE | B2 | — |
| TULLYROAN HOUSE 82 TULLYROAN ROAD SINCLAIR'S HILL DUNGANNON CO.TYRONE | B | — |
| Loughgall House 19 Main Street Loughgall Armagh Co Armagh BT61 8HZ | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Gate lodges at Manor House 33 and 35 Main Street Loughgall Armagh Co Armagh BT61 8HZ | B+ | 1840 – 1859 |
Discover more in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon
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/