PORTSTEWART covers 11.5 km² in Northern Ireland. With 16 historic sites and 1 scheduled monument on record, the ward sits at the 47th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 26 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 57th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 15.1 recorded sites — the 54th 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 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 PORTSTEWART
Of the 16 historic sites recorded, the most common are A.P. Site – Circular Cropmark (5, 31% of historic sites), General View (Period Unassigned) (1), and Multi-Period Occupation Site – Neolithic-Iron Age & Medieval (1). For A.P. Site – Circular Cropmarks, this is the 65th percentile among NI wards that record this type. For General View (Period Unassigned)s, this is the 0th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 11.5 km², this gives a recorded density of 3.74 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Note: 44% of historic site records carry an 'Unknown' period attribution and cannot be placed chronologically; the chronological breakdown reported below reflects only the dated subset.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| A.p. Site – Circular Cropmark | 5 | — |
| General View (period Unassigned) | 1 | — |
| Multi-period Occupation Site – Neolithic-iron Age & Medieval | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 44% of historic site records carry an ‘Unknown’ period attribution. The chronological breakdown above reflects only the dated subset.
Terrain and environment
A mean elevation of 15m places this ward among the lowest-lying in NI (6th percentile), reaching 47m at the highest point. Mean slope is 4.0° (46th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.6 (61th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land-cover mosaic combines improved grassland (51%), urban land (26%), and open water (11%), 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. 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 — 8 names in total — but it does include 2 Plantation-era placenames. With this few records, the count should be treated as indicative rather than a firm characterisation.
Placename categories
Scheduled monuments in PORTSTEWART
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 |
|---|---|---|
| PILLBOX | Pillbox | Modern |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – circular cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| East Mole – IHR 01376 | Post-Medieval | Unknown |
| HOLY WELL: TUBBER PATRICK | Early Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| Historic Settlement Portstewart | Post-Medieval | Domestic |
| MULTI-PERIOD OCCUPATION SITE – NEOLITHIC-IRON AGE & MEDIEVAL | Mesolithic | Unknown |
| NORTHERN IRELAND, LONDONDERRY, PORTSTEWART | Unknown | Unknown |
Listed buildings in PORTSTEWART
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Portstewart Presbyterian Church Enfield Street Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7BC | B+ | 1900 – 1919 |
| Portstewart Primary School 22-24 Central Avenue Portstewart Co. Londonerry BT55 7BT | B2 | 1920 – 1939 |
| St Mary's Dominican Convent 2 Strand Road Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7PF | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| 5-7 The Diamond Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7EA | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
| Former RUC Station 59 Coleraine Road Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7PZ | B2 | 1940 – 1959 |
| Agherton Parish Church The Church of St John the Baptist 19 Church Street Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7AH | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| St Mary's Star of the Sea 4 The Crescent Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7AB | B1 | 1900 – 1919 |
| 1-3 The Diamond Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7EA | B2 | 1860 – 1879 |
| 9-11 The Diamond Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7EA | B2 | 1900 – 1919 |
| 13 The Diamond Portstewart Co. Londonderry BT55 7EA | B2 | 1880 – 1899 |
Discover more in Causeway Coast and Glens
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See all 462 wards in the Northern Ireland Heritage Tool.
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/