MURLOUGH covers 32.3 km² in Northern Ireland. With 17 historic sites and 3 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 42nd percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 15 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 43rd percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 7.3 recorded sites — the 42nd percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Mesolithic through to the Early Medieval period, spanning 3 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 MURLOUGH
Of the 17 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (5, 29% of historic sites), Sandhills Occupation Site (2), and Five Sandhills Occupation Sites (1). For Enclosures, this is the 45th percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Sandhills Occupation Sites, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 32.3 km², this gives a recorded density of 1.08 sites per km² (all heritage types combined).
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 5 | — |
| Sandhills Occupation Site | 2 | — |
| Five Sandhills Occupation Sites | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
A mean elevation of 11m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (3th percentile), reaching 88m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.3° (26th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.1 sits in the 84th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (69%), urban land (11%), and woodland (11%), 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
This ward has only 8 placenames recorded across OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames, none of which fall into the diagnostic categories used for heritage analysis (ecclesiastical, defensive, Norse, Anglo-Norman, or Plantation-era). The remainder are generic Gaelic landscape forms that are common across Ireland and carry no specific period signal.
Scheduled monuments in MURLOUGH
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Standing stones (2) (remains of megalithic tomb) | Standing Stones (2) (Remains Of Megalithic Tomb) | Neolithic |
| Rath: St Cillan's Fort | Rath: St Cillan'S Fort | Early Medieval |
| ECCLESIASTICAL SITE | Ecclesiastical Site | Unknown |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| CROSS-CARVED STONE | Unknown | Ritual/Funerary |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE (destroyed) | Iron Age | Unknown |
| FIVE SANDHILLS OCCUPATION SITES | Mesolithic | Unknown |
| LATE NEOLITHIC OCCUPATION SITE/ SANDHILLS SITE | Mesolithic | Unknown |
| MAGHERA CHURCH AND ROUND TOWER | Early Medieval | Religious |
Listed buildings in MURLOUGH
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| MURLOUGH HOUSE MURLOUGH LOWER DUNDRUM Newcastle CO.DOWN | B1 | — |
| MURLOUGH FARM 25 KEEL POINT MURLOUGH LOWER DUNDRUM Newcastle CO. DOWN | B1 | — |
| LODGE MURLOUGH HOUSE MURLOUGH LOWER DUNDRUM Newcastle CO.DOWN | B | — |
| DOWNSHIRE BRIDGE DUNDRUM/MURLOUGH LOWER DUNDRUM Newcastle CO.DOWN | B2 | — |
| Maghera Parish Church Carrigs Road Carnacavill Newcastle County Down BT33 0JZ | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Church Hill 16 Church Hill Road Carnacavill Newcastle BT33 0JU | B1 | 1740 – 1759 |
| Slieve Donard Hotel Downs Road Newcastle County Down BT33 OAH | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Ashleigh, 85 Bryansford Road, Newcastle, Co. Down BT33 OLF | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Tower at former railway station, Railway Street, Newcastle, Co. Down BT33 OAL | B1 | 1900 – 1919 |
| Royal County Down Golf Club, Golf Links Road, Newcastle, Co. Down BT33 OAN | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
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/