Overview
Lurgan was laid out in straight lines during the 17th-century Plantation of Ulster, and the linen trade it grew on left it a town of unusually wide streets and one very large park. It sits on the south-east shore of Lough Neagh, about 18 miles south-west of Belfast, and is a stop on the Belfast–Dublin railway line; with a population of just over 38,000 (2021 census) it is the largest town in the Craigavon urban area. The Irish name, An Lorgain, means ‘the shin’, for the long low ridge the town sits on. It is a working town more than a tourist one – the draw is the park and Brownlow House rather than the streets themselves.
History and heritage
The Brownlow family took the Lurgan lands in the early 17th century and laid out the town during the Plantation of Ulster, with a market, water-mills and a windmill. Brownlow House, the Elizabethan-style manor built in the 1800s, still looks over the town and its park. Through the Industrial Revolution Lurgan became a major linen centre, hand-loom weaving shaping the local economy for generations.
The Great Famine hit hard in the 1840s: the population fell, and a workhouse opened in 1841 under the Poor Law to take in the destitute. The town centre today is a designated Conservation Area, its planned streets and older shopfronts largely intact.
What to see
Market Street, said locally to be one of the widest in Ireland, runs through the centre past its older shopfronts and the war memorial. The Italianate Lurgan Town Hall (1868) still hosts events and gatherings. On Distillery Hill, St Peter’s Catholic Church raises a steeple visible across much of the town, and Shankill Parish Church is known for its change-ringing bells.
Sport matters here: Glenavon FC play at Mourneview Park, and there are golf clubs and the Craigavon Golf & Ski Centre for year-round activity. Brownlow House itself opens for tours by prior arrangement only – it holds an American Second World War museum and a First World War exhibition, and its tea rooms open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 3pm.
Lurgan Park
The main reason to stop in Lurgan is the park – Northern Ireland’s largest urban park at more than 250 acres (259 by some counts), and a Green Flag winner. It is built around a man-made lake with roughly 5 km of woodland paths, and at the head of the main promenade stands the Coalbrookdale Fountain, one of only four cast-iron fountains of its kind left in the world.
There is plenty to do: tennis courts and a bowling green to book, football and cricket pitches for local clubs, coarse fishing on the lake (licence required), and rowing boats for hire at £2 a head for half an hour. The park runs a weekly parkrun and junior parkrun, and the Quirky Bird social-enterprise café keeps walkers fed. If you have only an hour in Lurgan, spend it here.
Getting there
Lurgan is well connected by road and rail. The M1 runs just to the west, with direct access at junction 10, and the railway station is a short walk from the centre, with regular services to Belfast Grand Central and on to Dublin via Portadown. Buses link the town to Belfast and around the region, with stops clustered on Market Street.
Free on-street parking is available at Windsor Avenue, Robert Street and off the A3 between Lurgan and Dollingstown, with more free parking at the Waves Leisure Centre. The park opens early and closes at dusk, the closing time stretching with the season – 6pm in midwinter, as late as 10pm from May to August. Mobility scooters can be borrowed free of charge if booked ahead with the Parks Development Officer, and tennis courts can be reserved 48 hours out through the council’s online system.
Nearby
Lurgan works as a base for the wider area. Ardress House, an 18th-century National Trust farmhouse with walled gardens, is a short drive out; Armagh City adds ecclesiastical history, the Observatory & Planetarium and the Armagh County Museum. Gosford Forest Park has miles of woodland trails, and Oxford Island Nature Reserve – the closest of the lot, on the Lough Neagh shore just north of town – is the pick for birdwatching and a lakeside walk.