MOUNTSANDEL covers 9.3 km² in Northern Ireland. With 14 historic sites and 2 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 79th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 110 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 94th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 34.6 recorded sites — the 80th percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Mesolithic through to the Post-Medieval 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 MOUNTSANDEL
Of the 14 historic sites recorded, the most common are Dominican Priory: Cuile Raithin (1, 7% of historic sites), Occupation Site (1), and The Citadel: 17Th Century Fortification (1). For Dominican Priory: Cuile Raithins, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. For Occupation Sites, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 9.3 km², this gives a recorded density of 13.55 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Dominican Priory: Cuile Raithin | 1 | — |
| Occupation Site | 1 | — |
| The Citadel: 17th Century Fortification | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
A mean elevation of 14m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (5th percentile), reaching 45m at the highest point. Mean slope is 4.0° (45th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.7 (65th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land-cover mosaic combines urban land (41%), woodland (33%), and improved grassland (19%), giving a mixed agricultural and semi-natural landscape.
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 coverage is limited (1%). 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 — 11 names in total — but it does include 2 ecclesiastical and 4 Plantation-era placenames. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Scheduled monuments in MOUNTSANDEL
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 |
|---|---|---|
| TIDAL FORD & MESOLITHIC MATERIAL | Tidal Ford & Mesolithic Material | Mesolithic |
| Mesolithic Settlement Site | Mesolithic Settlement Site | Mesolithic |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| C17TH HOUSE (site of – house now in Ulster Folk Museum) | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| C17TH WALLING | Post-Medieval | Unknown |
| DOMINICAN PRIORY: CUILE RAITHIN | Early Medieval | Religious |
| EARLY MONASTIC SITE & POST-MED. CHURCH & GRAVEYARD: ST. PATRICK'S | Early Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| HISTORIC SETTLEMENT: COLERAINE, also Killowen, Cuil-Raithin & Bannin | Early Medieval | Domestic |
| MEDIEVAL & POST-MED SETTLEMENT SITE | Medieval | Domestic |
| MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENT & POST-MED SETTLEMENT: COLERAINE | Medieval | Domestic |
| MESOLITHIC SETTLEMENT SITE: MOUNT SANDEL | Mesolithic | Domestic |
| OCCUPATION SITE | Unknown | Unknown |
| PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT SITE, MOTTE, PROMONTORY FORT & ARTILLERY FORT: MOUNTSANDEL FORT | Mesolithic | Defence |
Listed buildings in MOUNTSANDEL
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1860 – 1879 |
| 4 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1860 – 1879 |
| 6 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1860 – 1879 |
| 8 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1860 – 1879 |
| 10 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| 12 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| 14 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| 16 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| 18 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| 20 Lodge Road Coleraine Co. Londonderry BT52 1NB | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
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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/