SLEMISH covers 540.6 km² in Northern Ireland. With 272 historic sites and 20 scheduled monuments on record, the ward sits at the 97th percentile across all 462 NI wards for combined archaeological heritage. It also records 8 listed buildings (HED Historic Buildings Record), the 28th percentile for listed-building density across NI wards. Per 1,000 residents, this works out at 94.4 recorded sites — the 98th 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 8 archaeological periods, placing the ward in the 90th percentile NI-wide 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 SLEMISH
Of the 272 historic sites recorded, the most common are Enclosure (29, 11% of historic sites), Souterrain (13), and Field System (9). For Enclosures, this is placing the ward in the top 3% nationally for this type. For Souterrains, this is the 84th percentile across NI wards that record this type. Across the ward's 540.6 km², this gives a recorded density of 0.55 sites per km² (all heritage types combined). Scheduled monuments are distributed across approximately 0.08° of latitude and 0.20° of longitude within the ward, indicating dispersed rather than clustered placement.
Most common monument types
| Type | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosure | 29 | — |
| Souterrain | 13 | — |
| Field System | 9 | — |
Chronological distribution
Note: 21% 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 217m places this ward in the top 3% of NI wards by altitude, but the ward reaches 443m at its highest point — a vertical span of more than 226m within its boundary, indicating significant topographic diversity. Mean slope is 4.7° (63th percentile across NI), giving moderately undulating terrain. The Topographic Wetness Index of 10.1 (32th NI percentile) indicates moderate drainage, balanced between upland shedding and lowland accumulation. The land cover is dominated by improved grassland (87%) and woodland (12%). In overall character, this is elevated but relatively gentle terrain — typical of plateau country, with land use dominated by improved grassland.
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 covers 11% of the ward. Peat-bound ground preserves organic archaeological material that would not survive on aerated mineral soils. Bedrock composition is uniform (complexity index 0.06), 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 combined OSNI, Logainm NI, and GeoNames sources record 71 placenames for this ward. Diagnostic heritage strata identified within these are: 4 pre-Christian defensive (rath-, dún-, lios-, caiseal-), 2 ecclesiastical (cill-, teampall-, mainistir-, díseart-), and 1 Plantation-era (17th c English/Scots settlement names). Note: Irish-language (name_ga) forms are recorded for roughly half of NI placenames in the combined sources, so anglicised forms whose Irish original could belong to multiple categories may be misclassified.
Placename categories
Scheduled monuments in SLEMISH
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Barrow | Barrow | Early Bronze Age |
| Stone Enclosure | Stone Enclosure | Iron Age |
| Multivallate Rath | Multivallate Rath | Iron Age |
| Ring Cairn | Ring Cairn | Early Bronze Age |
| Cashel | Cashel | Early Medieval |
| Motte and bailey: Ballymena Fort | Motte And Bailey: Ballymena Fort | Medieval |
| Court tomb | Court Tomb | Neolithic |
| Wedge Tomb | Wedge Tomb | Neolithic |
Recorded historic sites
| Name | Period | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2 ENCLOSURES & FIELD BOUNDARIES | Unknown | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE | Modern | 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 enclosure? | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – 2 CAIRNS? | Unknown | Ritual/Funerary |
| A.P. SITE – D-shaped enclosure | Iron Age | Unknown |
| A.P. SITE – FIELD SYSTEM | Middle-Late Bronze Age | Agriculture |
| A.P. SITE – LARGE ENCLOSURE? | Iron Age | Unknown |
Listed buildings in SLEMISH
| Address / Name | Grade | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Owencloghy Bridge Deer Park Road Deer Park Farms Glenarm Ballymena Co Antrim | B2 | 1820 – 1839 |
| House at 53 Deerpark Road Drumcrow Glenarm Ballymena Co Antrim BT44 0BH | B+ | 1840 – 1859 |
| McCartney's Bridge Drumcrow Road Aughaboy Glenarm Ballymena Co Antrim | B2 | 1920 – 1939 |
| WHITEHALL 24 TULLYMORE ROAD BROUGHSHANE BALLYMENA CO.ANTRIM | B | — |
| "CLEGGAN LODGE" BALLYMENA CO.ANTRIM | B | — |
| GLENCAIRN (NOW CARNCAIRN LODGE) 40 CARNLOUGH ROAD BROUGHSHANE CO.ANTRIM | B1 | — |
| Cairnalbana Presbyterian Church Glenview Road Carnalbanagh Glenarm Ballymena Co Antrim BT44 0DL | Record Only | 1980 – 1999 |
| 20 Cloneytrace Road Broughshane BT43 7HY | Record Only | — |
Discover more in Mid and East Antrim
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/