Qualla: Lurgan https://qualla.com/lurgan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lurgan https://qualla.com/lurgan Lurgan: Introduction https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit FNO1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The straight line is the giveaway. Walk Lurgan's main street from the railway station northward and you walk along a thoroughfare designed by an English plantation lord in 1610: long, wide, and ruler-straight in a country where most older streets curve. William Brownlow had been granted the land by King James I and he laid out the town to suit himself. Four hundred years later, the streets he drew are still recognisable on any map of the place. The town that grew up on them ran on linen and lawn-bowling and ginger ale, and now runs on supermarkets and motorways, but the original grid still gives Lurgan its rare, almost American sense of openness.

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Image: FNO1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lurgan: Brownlow's Town https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit Notafly, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lurgan is one of the most legibly Plantation-era towns in Ulster. The original layout was drawn up around 1610 by William Brownlow, who had been granted 1,500 acres in the area as part of the Plantation of Ulster, a confiscation of Irish land for resettlement by English and Scott...

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Image: Notafly | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-brownlows-town.mp3 0:06 2 full Lurgan: The Linen Town https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit Brian Shaw, CC BY-SA 2.0. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries Lurgan was one of the great linen-weaving towns of Ulster. Cottage looms in the back rooms of the workers' houses gave way, gradually, to power-loom factories along the streams. The Linenhall in the town centre was a market hall where farmer...

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Image: Brian Shaw | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-the-linen-town.mp3 0:06 3 full Lurgan: The Park That Was Built To Beat Belfast https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit Erl Johnston, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lurgan Park, on the south side of the town, is the largest urban park in Northern Ireland and the second largest in Ireland after Phoenix Park in Dublin. It was created in 1893 on the grounds of the Brownlow estate. The park covers 110 hectares of lakes, gardens, sports pitches, ...

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Image: Erl Johnston | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-the-park-that-was-built-to-beat-belfast.mp3 0:06 4 full Lurgan: Craigavon, The New City https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit Notafly, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the late 1960s, the Northern Ireland government announced plans for a new city to be built between Lurgan and Portadown, eight miles to the southwest. The idea was that the existing towns and a new central district would form a single planned conurbation along the M1 motorway ...

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Image: Notafly | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-craigavon-the-new-city.mp3 0:06 5 full Lurgan: Catholic And Protestant Streets https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lurgan, like much of the Lurgan-Portadown belt, was during the Troubles one of the most deeply divided towns in Northern Ireland. Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods lay close together, and the murders, riots, and bombings of the 1970s through the 1990s were concentrated in th...

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Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-catholic-and-protestant-streets.mp3 0:06 6 full Lurgan: Famous Sons, Famous Sausages https://qualla.com/lurgan/ Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lurgan's most internationally famous export is probably the actor Liam Neeson, who was born in nearby Ballymena and attended St Patrick's College there before later connections to the town. The boxer Eamonn Loughran, the footballer Aaron Hughes, and the snooker player Mark Allen ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/m/lurgan-wp/gcem-lurgan-famous-sons-famous-sausages.mp3 0:06 7 full