Administrative Boundary of Lisburn and Castlereagh

About Lisburn and Castlereagh

Lisburn and Castlereagh is a district council area in Northern Ireland. Covering approximately 444 square kilometres to the south and southeast of Belfast, Lisburn and Castlereagh had a population of approximately 145,000 at the 2021 Census. The district was created in 2015 by the merger of the former Lisburn City Council and Castlereagh Borough Council. Lisburn is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland, closely connected to the history of the Irish linen industry, and the district contains Hillsborough Castle, the official Northern Ireland residence of the British Royal Family and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Lisburn and the Linen Industry Lisburn — granted city status in 2002 — grew to industrial prominence in the late 17th and 18th centuries as one of the most important centres of linen weaving in the world. The catalyst for this growth was the settlement of Huguenot refugees in the town in the 1690s following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685): Louis Crommelin, a skilled Huguenot linen merchant and weaver from Picardy, was appointed Overseer of the Royal Linen Manufacture of Ireland by William III in 1699 and established his operations in Lisburn. The linen industry expanded dramatically through the 18th century, making County Antrim and County Down some of the most prosperous industrial regions in Ireland. The Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum — housed in the 17th-century Market House in the centre of Lisburn — tells the story of the linen industry from flax cultivation to woven cloth, with working demonstrations of hand-spinning and weaving and an outstanding collection of historic linen samples, documents, and textiles. Hillsborough Castle and the Anglo-Irish Agreement Hillsborough Castle — the official Northern Ireland residence of the British Monarch and the headquarters of the Northern Ireland Office — is a handsome early 19th-century Regency Gothic house in the village of Hillsborough, set in approximately 100 acres of gardens open to the public. Hillsborough was the scene of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 15 November 1985, the landmark accord between the British and Irish governments that gave the Republic of Ireland a consultative role in the governance of Northern Ireland — the first formal recognition of an Irish government interest in Northern Ireland since 1921, and a foundational step towards the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The village of Hillsborough itself is a remarkably complete example of an 18th-century planned estate village, its broad main street lined with Georgian townhouses, its parish church (Church of Ireland, 18th century) a distinguished building. Hillsborough Fort, an earthwork fort of 1650, stands at the edge of the village. Castlereagh and the Lagan Valley Castlereagh — to the east of Belfast — is a largely residential area forming part of the southern suburbs of Greater Belfast. The Lagan Valley Regional Park extends along the Lagan towpath through the district, connecting Lisburn and Belfast through a corridor of countryside. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Lisburn and Castlereagh District Council is available for free download in GeoJSON and KML formats, sourced from the OSNI Open Data portal (Crown copyright 2024). Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Google Earth, the dataset supports industrial heritage mapping, estate village conservation, peace process geography, Lagan Valley ecology research, and demographic analysis across the local authority area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Lisburn and Castlereagh county