What counts as a registered battlefield?

It is the site of a battle judged historically important enough to be recorded on a national register or inventory. In England these are the 47 sites on the Historic England Register of Historic Battlefields; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland keep their own registers and inventories.

Which nations are covered?

All four UK nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They are reconciled into one schema with 558 sites in total and one stable identity per site.

Are all the battlefields statutory?

No. England and Scotland maintain statutory registers. Wales (RCAHMW) and Northern Ireland (HERoNI) keep non-statutory inventories. Every record carries a flag stating which, so you never assume uniform legal force across the UK.

Where does the data come from?

Four public-sector custodians: Historic England, Historic Environment Scotland, RCAHMW (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales) and HERoNI (Historic Environment Record of Northern Ireland). Each record returns its source and attribution.

Open Government Licence v3.0 throughout. The dataset deliberately excludes non-OGL sources so commercial reuse stays clean, and the attribution for the relevant custodian is returned on every record. The licence is an annual licence rather than pay-per-call.

Read-only over REST at /v1/heritage. Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch one battlefield by stable id. The /types vocabulary endpoint is free to evaluate.

The model is snapshot-versioned and refreshed monthly against the source registers. Each record carries its designation and amendment dates with a precision flag, so a year-only value is never served as an exact calendar date.

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Registered Battlefields

558 recorded UK battlefields in one schema, from Historic England's statutory Register and Historic Environment Scotland's Inventory plus Welsh and NI inventories, each flagged statutory or not.

558

Battlefields

Nations

EPSG:4326

Geometry

OGL v3.0

Licence

Overview

About this dataset

A registered battlefield is the site of a historically important battle recorded on a national register or inventory. This dataset brings together all 558 recorded battlefields across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland into one schema, with one stable identity per site.

Two of the four nations carry statutory weight. The Historic England Register of Historic Battlefields lists 47 statutory sites in England, and the Historic Environment Scotland Inventory of Historic Battlefields is statutory in Scotland. Wales and Northern Ireland are covered by non-statutory records: the RCAHMW National Monuments Record of Wales battle-site points and the HERoNI Battlesites inventory. We flag statutory versus non-statutory on every record rather than implying uniform legal force.

Each record is reprojected server-side to EPSG:4326 (WGS84) so you can map it directly, and carries a stable identifier in the form design.heritage.{nation}.battlefield.{reference}. Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon over /v1/heritage, or fetch a single battlefield by id.

Every record returns its source custodian, attribution and Open Government Licence v3.0 terms, so commercial reuse stays clean. Battlefields sit alongside listed buildings, scheduled monuments and other designations in the same heritage model, giving you one constraint layer for site due diligence and planning checks.

What's included

Everything in the box

Spatial query four ways

Search battlefields by point, radius, bounding box or polygon over /v1/heritage, or fetch a single site by its stable id.

Honest statutory flag

Each record states whether its source register is statutory (England, Scotland) or a non-statutory inventory (Wales, Northern Ireland), so you never assume uniform legal force.

Stable battlefield identity

Every site carries an id like design.heritage.ENG.battlefield.1000008 that stays put across snapshots.

EPSG:4326 geometry

Centroids are reprojected server-side from British National Grid to WGS84, ready to map without further conversion.

Four registers, one schema

Historic England, Historic Environment Scotland, RCAHMW and HERoNI records reconciled into one set of fields and one identity per designation.

Clean OGL provenance

Open Government Licence v3.0 throughout, with per-custodian attribution returned on every record.

Data fields

What each record carries

schema14 fields

reference: string// The source register reference for the battlefield.

nation: enum// The UK nation the site falls in (ENG, SCO, WAL, NIR).

source: string// The custodian register or inventory the record came from.

name: string// The battlefield name as recorded by the custodian.

name_cy: string// Welsh-language name where the Welsh source provides one, otherwise null.

designation_type: string// The designation type, always battlefield for this product.

battle_type: enum// Harmonised value-domain classification of the engagement (premium vocabulary tier).

statutory: boolean// True where the source register is statutory (England, Scotland), false for non-statutory inventories (Wales, Northern Ireland).

designated_date: date// Date the battlefield was registered or recorded.

amended_date: date// Date the record was last amended, where given.

date_precision: enum// Precision of the served dates: day, month, year or none.

local_authority: string// The local authority the site falls in.

area_hectares: float// Area of the registered battlefield extent in hectares, where the source provides a boundary.

centroid: object// Representative point in EPSG:4326 (WGS84) as lat/lng.

Sample response

Straight from the API

response.jsonapplication/json

{
  "id": "design.heritage.ENG.battlefield.1000008",
  "reference": "1000008",
  "nation": "ENG",
  "source": "Historic England Register of Historic Battlefields",
  "name": "Battle of Bosworth 1485",
  "name_cy": null,
  "designation_type": "battlefield",
  "battle_type": "pitched_battle",
  "statutory": true,
  "designated_date": "1995-06-06",
  "amended_date": "2013-03-21",
  "date_precision": "day",
  "category": "Registered Battlefield",
  "local_authority": "Leicestershire",
  "area_hectares": 524.7,
  "source_url": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000008",
  "centroid": {
    "lat": 52.5894,
    "lng": -1.4119
  },
  "licence": "OGL v3.0",
  "attribution": "Contains Historic England data licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0"
}

Use cases

What people build with it

Site due diligence

Check whether a development site sits on or near a registered battlefield before land acquisition, since designated battlefields are a material planning consideration.

Developers

Planning constraint checks

Screen application sites against statutory and non-statutory battlefield boundaries in one call alongside other heritage designations.

Planners

Heritage risk in valuation

Flag battlefield designation as a heritage constraint that can limit development potential and affect value.

Surveyors

National constraint layers

Add battlefields to a constraints map alongside listed buildings and scheduled monuments using one schema and one identity scheme.

PropTech