MEROK covers 4.2 km² in Northern Ireland. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 2.3 recorded sites — the 21st percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population).
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 MEROK
Across the ward's 4.2 km², this gives a recorded density of 2.38 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Terrain and environment
A mean elevation of 20m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (10th percentile). The terrain is broadly flat, with a mean slope of 3.0° (17th percentile across NI). The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.9 (77th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land-cover mosaic combines urban land (80%), improved grassland (12%), and woodland (7%), 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 urban land.
Terrain measurements
Where this ward sits in NI
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 0.71, 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 placename record for this ward is small — 5 names in total — but it does include 1 pre-Christian defensive placename. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Listed buildings in MEROK
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| St. John the Evangelist Church of Ireland 397 Castlereagh Road Belfast County Down BT5 6AB | B1 | 1940 – 1959 |
| St. Finnian's Church of Ireland Cregagh Park Belfast County Antrim BT6 9LF | B+ | 1920 – 1939 |
| Business Park 38 Montgomery Road Belfast County Antrim BT6 9HL | B2 | 1940 – 1959 |
| 1 Upper Knockbreda Road Belfast County Antrim BT6 9QH | B1 | 1900 – 1919 |
| Lisnasharragh High School Stirling Avenue Belfast County Antrim BT6 9LP ** See General Comments ** | Record Only | — |
| Lisnasharragh Primary School Tudor Drive Belfast County Antrim BT6 9LS ** See General Comments ** | Record Only | — |
| Terrace at Thiepval Avenue BELFAST County Antrim BT6 9JF ** See General Comments ** | Record Only | — |
| 1914-1918 War Memorial Thiepval Avenue Belfast County Antrim ** See General Comments ** | Record Only | — |
| Castlereagh Police Station 2 Alexander Road Belfast BT6 9HH | Record Only | 1940 – 1959 |
| Boundary Marker, Orangefield Presbyterian Church, 464 Castlereagh Road, Belfast, BT5 6BH | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
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/