Ballug

17 registered freehold parcels lie mostly in Ballug, from 125 m² to 173,288 m² (17.33 ha, 42.82 acres). The dashed line is the townland's boundary. 19 neighbouring parcels touch it.

Download the townland as DXF, in Irish Transverse Mercator metres, with its boundary, parcels and buildings, or as GeoJSON or KML.

No zone of a development plan covers Ballug in the national zoning. Outside zoned towns and villages, the county development plan's rural policies apply to each application.

Source: Tailte Éireann and the Department of Housing (MyPlan), national zoning, CC BY 4.0.

No planning application touches the townland of Ballug in the national file, which goes back to 2010.

Source: National Planning Applications, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, CC BY 4.0. Applicants are not shown.

Designated sites

No designated site (Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area, Natural Heritage Area or proposed one) touches the townland of Ballug.

Recorded monuments

• LH008-088001 Castle - tower house
  Description

  Built of roughly coursed rubble greywacke and limestone blocks, now in a very poor state of preservation and extensively altered by later occupants. The E and S walls are almost intact but the rest of the structure is badly ruined. Projecting tower at SE angle with stairwell gave access to two floor levels above barrel-vaulted ground floor. This tower projects eastwards and there was possibly a matching tower at the NW angle to accommodate the garderobes. As illustrated by Wright (1758, bk II, pl. XII, fig. 1), the original entrance is through the E end of the S wall and the entrance to the stairwell is to its E side. The remaining jambs of the doorway are of chamfered punch-dressed limestone. The arch stones are missing but there is a large sandstone lintel over the entrance to the barrel-vaulted area of the ground floor. The inner faces of the door jambs have been rebated so that they line up with the side walls of the entranceway. The side walls are not bonded with the jambs and merely abut them. There is a bolt hole immediately behind the jambs and a well constructed murder hole (c. 0.4m sq.) over. Little remains of the barrel vault, which is set on a N-S axis, and modern entrances have been cut through its E and W walls. There are two small recesses in the S wall, one over the other, at ground level. The W ends of the N and S walls are destroyed, while the W wall is almost totally ruined and the remaining portion leans dangerously outwards. There are recesses in the NE angle of the castle at first- and second-floor level but access to this portion of the building could not be gained so it was not possible to establish whether or not they, rather than the NW angle, were used for garderobes. The NE angle also has a small tower rising above the level of the wall tops and through which the wall-walk passes. The SE angle-tower which contains the stairwell gave access to the first- and second floor levels as well as the wall-walk. Access is through a doorway at the E side of the main entrance. It has hammer-dressed limestone jambs with a rough sandstone lintel over. The steps are constructed of well-dressed limestone blocks up to first-floor level. First- and second-floor level doorways have hammer-dressed limestone jambs with sandstone lintels and sills. Sandstone blocks have been used for the steps from the first- to the second-floor level. There are single splayed opes in the stairwell. The wall-walk is made from large thin slabs of greywacke which slope towards the outside while the remaining angles have corbels projecting inwards by c. 0.25m to carry the corner-towers. In the N wall a relieving arch with a large granite lintel underneath it can be seen in the upper level. Also at this level in the same wall are the remains of a large single-light window with large stone blocks for jambs and lintel. It has a window seat remaining at the E side of the embrasure. The jambs are of hammer-dressed limestone, as are those of the blocked window immediately below at first-floor level. The E wall has a modern doorway knocked through at first-floor level and access is gained by external stone steps built over a modern ground-floor extension abutting the E facade and extending out as far as the line of the projecting SE angle-tower. These steps and doorway were made to give access to the first floor, presumably allowing it to be used for grain storage when the building ceased to be lived in. The remains of a house (LH008-088002-), now ruined, are attached to the N wall of the tower house. (Wright 1758, bk II, pl. XII; Stubbs 1908, 34) The above description is derived from both the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1986) and the 'Archaeological Survey of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1991). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 17 July 2007

• LH008-088002 House - indeterminate date
  Description

  The remains of a house, now ruined, are attached to the N wall of 'Ballug Castle' (LH008-088001-). Compiled by: Claire Breen Date of upload: 6 March 2012

• LH008-127 Enclosure
  Description

  Located on a fairly level landscape. The cropmark of a circular enclosure (diam. c. 35m) defined by a single fosse is visible only on a Digital Globe image (2011-13). It was first reported by Jean Charles Caillére. See the attached enhanced view from Digital Globe Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload; 21 January 2022

Architectural heritage

No building of the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage stands in the townland of Ballug.

Designated sites: National Parks and Wildlife Service. Recorded monuments: Sites and Monuments Record, National Monuments Service. Buildings: National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, CC BY 4.0. Works at or in relation to a recorded monument need two months' written notice to the National Monuments Service (National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994, section 12).

Radon

At the centre of the townland of Ballug, about 1 in 10 homes in this area is likely to have high radon levels. Testing a home

Landslides

The 1:50,000 map rates the landslide susceptibility here as low, partly inferred.

Terrain model

No LiDAR survey of the Office of Public Works covers the centre of the townland of Ballug.

Flooding

The Office of Public Works publishes its flood maps on floodinfo.ie.

Radon Risk Map of Ireland, Environmental Protection Agency, and Landslide Susceptibility Classification, Geological Survey Ireland, both under CC BY 4.0. LiDAR: contains Irish Public Sector Data (Geological Survey Ireland & the Office of Public Works) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

No address of the register names Ballug with five sales or more. The sales of the area are on the page of Co. Louth.

Name

Ballug · Baile Loig

Area

600,308 m² (60.03 ha, 148.34 acres)

Civil parish

Carlingford, and its townlands

Barony

Dundalk Lower

Electoral division

Greenore, the unit of the census

Census 2022

1,250 people lived in 430 households in the Greenore electoral division. 86% of households owned their home. 38% of homes were built since 2001. 7% of dwellings stood vacant on census night, and 11% were holiday homes.

Neighbouring townlands

Ardtully Beg, Ardtully More, Ballynamaghery, Ballynamony (Bradshaw), Templetown

Placenames

Ballug on logainm.ie, the Placenames Database of Ireland

Townlands, civil parishes, baronies and electoral divisions, National Statutory Boundaries, Tailte Éireann, CC BY 4.0. Census 2022, Small Area Population Statistics by electoral division, Central Statistics Office, CC BY 4.0. A townland is the smallest land division of Ireland, and the unit of a rural address. Old registers such as the 1901 and 1911 censuses file it under its civil parish and barony.