This download service provides spatial data available from Historic Environment Scotland. The following datasets are included: - World Heritage Sites - Conservation Areas - Scheduled Monuments - Gardens and Designed Landscapes - Listed Buildings - Battlefields Inventory Boundaries - Historic Marine Protected Areas - Properties in Care

The Historic Land use Assessment (HLA) is a technique for helping understand the historic aspects of the landscape around us from an archaeological perspective. The HLA records the historical origins of the various components that make up the landscape, showing how they interrelate spatially and chronologically, and in doing so offers an insight into some of the processes that have created our modern landscape and enables us to recognise how features that survive from past events continue to influence the present. As such, the HLA is a key tool for understanding the historic landscape and complements other techniques of landscape assessment. In combination these enable a more holistic view of the landscape and its development over time to be achieved and approaches to landscape management and planning to be better integrated.

Defining Scotland’s Places (DSP) aims to define the known extent of the archaeological sites and monuments in the National Record of the Historic Environment at Historic Environment Scotland, John Sinclair House, Edinburgh. The polygons created through Defining Scotland's Places do not carry ANY legal status. For instance they do not represent the legal extent of a Scheduled Monument or Listed Building.

The Listed Building Dataset comprises the statutory addresses and supplementary information for listed buildings in Scotland. Listing is the recognition through the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 that a building or structure is of ‘special’ interest. Historic Environment Scotland lists buildings on behalf of Scottish Ministers.

The defining of Conservation Areas is governed by the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997; an update from previous Acts relating to such areas. Conservation Areas are designated by local planning authorities and can play an important role in environmental enhancement, economic and community regeneration (e.g. Townscape Heritage Initiatives and Conservation Areas Regeneration Schemes). Councils review conservation areas from time to time in order to assess the need for alteration of boundaries for areas for which special planning considerations apply, e.g. Article 4 directions. Many conservation areas now have character appraisals to explain what it is that should be preserved and what can be enhanced.

Scottish Cultural ProtectedSites are INSPIRE compliant versions of Historic Environment Scotland designations and national monument records data. The Scottish Cultural Designations schema includes the following designation values: - Battlefield - Conservation Area - Garden and Designed Landscape - Historic Marine Protected Area - Listed Building - Scheduled Monument World Heritage Sites are included within the UNESCOWorldHeritage designation schema National Monument Records are included in the NationalMonumentRecord designation schema

Gardens and designed landscapes are grounds which have been laid out for artistic effect and, in appropriate cases, include references to any buildings, land, or water on, adjacent, or contiguous to such grounds. Sites included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes are nationally important. The criteria for determining national importance is published in Annex 5 of the Scottish Historic Environment Policy 2011. The duty to compile and maintain the Inventory is statutory. Historic Environment Scotland manages this work on behalf of the Scottish Ministers. There is no primary legislation that affords protection to Inventory gardens and designed landscapes. However, Inventory status is a material consideration in the planning system.

The Scottish Radiocarbon index shows the location of archaeological sites in Scotland where radiocarbon dating has been undertaken. The spatial index includes a link to the relevant record on the Canmore database (https://canmore.org.uk/) listing all recorded radiocarbon determinations with hyperlinks leading to individual results. The database excludes those results that cannot be linked to an identifiable site record in Canmore. It does not represent a complete record of all radiocarbon determinations undertaken across Scotland but is relatively complete up to 2005.

Historic Marine Protected Areas ‘Historic MPAs’ are designated under Section 67 of the Marine Scotland Act 2010 to protect marine historic assets (e.g historic shipwrecks) of national importance within Scottish territorial waters. The Scottish Government is committed to clean, healthy, safe, productive, biologically diverse marine and coastal environments, managed to meet the long-term needs of people and nature. This includes protecting and, where appropriate, enhancing our most important historic wrecks and other marine heritage sites in such a way that they can be valued and understood. One way Scottish Ministers can achieve this is by designating nationally important marine historic assets in Scottish territorial waters as Historic Marine Protected Areas under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. The data shows the boundaries of all Historic Marine Protected Areas in Scotland. You should refer to the Historic Marine Protected Area site documentation for exact locations of individual boundary points and supplementary information.

Scheduled monuments are nationally important monuments and sites. The aim of scheduling is to preserve sites and monuments as far as possible in the form in which they have come down to us today. They are legally protected through the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. National importance takes account of a wide range of factors, including artistic, archaeological, architectural, historic, traditional, aesthetic, scientific and social. Guidance and criteria to assess national importance of monuments is set out by Scottish Ministers in The Scottish Historic Environment Policy. This data allows you to identify the approximate position, size and extent of scheduled monuments in Scotland.