RANDALSTOWN covers 50.2 km² in Northern Ireland. With 27 historic sites and 7 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 75th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 81 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 90th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 31.1 recorded sites — the 77th percentile across NI wards (a measure of heritage density relative to current population). Dated archaeological evidence runs from the Early Bronze Age through to the Modern period, spanning 6 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 RANDALSTOWN
Of the 27 historic sites recorded, the most common are Rath (6, 22% of historic sites), Tree Ring (2), and Rath: Lisnamoosy Rath (1). For Raths, this is the 47th percentile among NI wards that record this type. For Tree Rings, this is the 26th percentile among NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 50.2 km², this gives a recorded density of 2.29 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments occupy a compact area within the ward (less than 0.05° of geographic spread), indicating clustered placement.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rath | 6 | — |
| Tree Ring | 2 | — |
| Rath: Lisnamoosy Rath | 1 | — |
Chronological distribution
Terrain and environment
Mean elevation of 27m sits around the NI median (20th percentile), reaching 66m at the highest point. Mean slope is 3.4° (31th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. Drainage is poor across much of the ward — the Topographic Wetness Index of 11.4 sits in the 93th NI percentile, reflecting low-lying or impeded-drainage ground prone to waterlogging. The land-cover mosaic combines woodland (33%), improved grassland (30%), and open water (30%), 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 moderately varied (complexity index 0.55), with two or three geological units present within the ward boundary.
Placename evidence
This ward has only 7 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 RANDALSTOWN
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Rath and adjoining earthworks: McDonalds Fort | Rath And Adjoining Earthworks: Mcdonalds Fort | Early Medieval |
| Motte and Bailey: Dunlin | Motte And Bailey: Dunlin | Medieval |
| FORTIFICATION – 'SHANE'S CASTLE' | Fortification – 'Shane'S Castle' | Unknown |
| MOUND – MOTTE & BAILEY?: THE MOUNT | Mound – Motte & Bailey?: The Mount | Medieval |
| PILLBOX | Pillbox | Modern |
| PILLBOX | Pillbox | Modern |
| PILLBOX | Pillbox | Modern |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| A.P. SITE – cropmark | Unknown | Unknown |
| ENCLOSURE | Iron Age | Unknown |
| LiDAR site- Possible rath | Early Medieval | Defence |
| MILL | Post-Medieval | Agriculture |
| MOTTE AND BAILEY: DUNHIN | Medieval | Defence |
| MOUND – MOTTE & BAILEY?: THE MOUNT | Medieval | Defence |
| PILLBOX | Modern | Defence |
| PRIVATE GRAVEYARD & VAULT | Post-Medieval | Ritual/Funerary |
| Pillbox | Modern | Defence |
| RATH | Early Medieval | Defence |
Listed buildings in RANDALSTOWN
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Shane's Castle ruins Shane's Castle Park Antrim Co Antrim | A | Pre 1600 |
| Gates and gate screen at Dunmore Lodge 1 Dunmore Park Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3LB | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| The Hermitage 7 Ahoghill Road Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3BJ | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Drummaul Parish Church (St Brigid's C. of I.) Church Road Randalstown Co Antrim | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| Randalstown Presbyterian Church (Old Congregation) Portglenone Road Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim | A | 1780 – 1799 |
| First Presbyterian Church New Street Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim | Record Only | 1840 – 1859 |
| Drummaul House 41 New Street Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3AF | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| 38 New Street Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3AF | B2 | 1840 – 1859 |
| Public Library 34 New Street Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3AF | B1 | 1820 – 1839 |
| 26 New Street Randalstown Antrim Co Antrim BT41 3AF | B1 | 1840 – 1859 |
Discover more in Antrim and Newtownabbey
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/