Administrative Boundary of Mid Ulster

About Mid Ulster

Mid Ulster is a district council area in Northern Ireland. Covering approximately 1,818 square kilometres of the central Ulster heartland — from the Sperrins in the north and west to the shores of Lough Neagh in the east — Mid Ulster had a population of approximately 148,000 at the 2021 Census. The district was created in 2015 by the merger of the former Cookstown District Council, Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council, and Magherafelt District Council. The district lies in the historic county of Tyrone and includes Dungannon, the ancient seat of the O'Neill kings of Ulster, the remarkable Beaghmore Stone Circles, and the Sperrin Mountains. Dungannon and the O'Neills Dungannon — the largest town in the district — was the principal seat of the O'Neill dynasty, the dominant Gaelic lords of Ulster, for much of the medieval period. The O'Neill kings ruled Tyrone from their hill fort at Dungannon from at least the 14th century; Dungannon served as the symbolic capital of Gaelic Ulster until the Flight of the Earls in 1607, when the Earl of Tyrone (Hugh O'Neill, the Great O'Neill) and the Earl of Tyrconnell (Rory O'Donnell) left Ireland for mainland Europe following their defeat by the English, effectively ending the old Gaelic order in Ulster and precipitating the Ulster Plantation. Tyrone Crystal — a manufacturer of hand-crafted crystal — is one of the district's well-known products. Beaghmore Stone Circles The Beaghmore Stone Circle complex — on the Sperrin foothills near Cookstown — is one of the most impressive and enigmatic prehistoric monuments in Northern Ireland. Discovered during peat-cutting in the 1940s and 1950s, the complex consists of seven stone circles, 10 stone rows or alignments, and 12 round cairns, all dating from the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000–1200 BC). The circles, while small individually, are arranged in pairs and aligned with astronomical phenomena including the midsummer sunrise. One of the circles (Dragon's Teeth) is filled with hundreds of small upright stones, creating a dense field of stones unlike anything elsewhere in Ireland. The name Beaghmore derives from the Irish Beitheach Mhór, "the large birch place," reflecting the landscape before Neolithic and Bronze Age clearance and peat formation. Cookstown and the Sperrin Mountains Cookstown is notable for its unusually long and straight main street — approximately 2 kilometres long and 40 metres wide — laid out in the early 17th century during the Plantation of Ulster on a hillside overlooking the town, creating one of the most distinctive streetscapes in Northern Ireland. Springhill (National Trust) — a 17th-century plantation house near Moneymore — is an excellent example of a Plantation settler's house. The Sperrin Mountains, a broad range of rounded hills straddling County Tyrone and County Londonderry and designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, form the northern and western backdrop of the district; Sawel Mountain (678 metres) is the highest peak. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Mid Ulster 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 Bronze Age archaeology mapping, Gaelic heritage research, plantation history analysis, upland landscape management, and demographic analysis across the local authority area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Mid Ulster county