They called it the Hub of the North. Not for any romantic reason. In the 1850s, the Great Northern Railway pushed lines outward from Portadown in four directions at once: north to Belfast, south to Dublin, west toward Armagh and Derry, and east toward Warrenpoint. The town that grew up at the meeting point became one of the most important transit nodes in Ulster, and a town of linen mills, victualling yards, and railway hotels. The hub function is mostly gone now. What is not gone is the river, the Drumcree parish church on its little hill above town, and a long history that takes in everything from Bramley apples to the most internationally watched parade dispute of the late 20th century.
Portadown was founded during the Plantation of Ulster in the early 17th century, when much of the surrounding land was granted to English and Scottish settlers. The town remained a small market settlement for two centuries before the Victorian railway transformed it. The first railway line, the Ulster Railway from Belfast, reached Portadown in 1842. By the 1860s the junction had been established and the town was suddenly important. Linen mills followed: by the late 19th century, the Castle Brothers and other firms were spinning and weaving in factories along the Bann, employing thousands. Bann Disc, manufacturers of high-quality linen damask, exported across the British Empire. The orchards of the surrounding country sent apples here for shipping; the town earned its second nickname, the Orchard Town, well before the wider county was called the Orchard County.
Portadown sits where the Upper Bann becomes navigable, and the river runs through the town from south to north, then on into Lough Neagh. The Newry Canal opened in 1742, connecting the Bann at Portadown to the sea at Newry; it was the first summit-level canal built in either Ireland or Great Britain. Old warehouses still stand along the canal basin at Shillington's Quay, some converted to housing, others to restaurants. The river is now a fishing ground for coarse anglers and is used by the Portadown Boat Club for rowing. Otters have returned to the upper reaches. In summer the towpath from town up to Knock Bridge and beyond is one of the most popular walking routes in the borough.
On a low hill in the parish of Drumcree, just outside the town centre on the western bank of the Bann, stands the Church of the Ascension, a small Church of Ireland parish church built in the 1850s. Each year on the Sunday before the Twelfth of July, members of the Portadown District Loyal Orange Lodge No. 1 march from the church back to their hall in central Portadown, traditionally along the Garvaghy Road. The Garvaghy Road runs through a largely Catholic, Irish-nationalist neighbourhood whose residents began organising in the 1990s against the parade. The Drumcree dispute escalated through the mid-1990s into one of the most serious confrontations of the late Troubles, with stand-offs between police and Orangemen, days of riots across Northern Ireland, and substantial diplomatic involvement. From 1998, the Parades Commission has held the parade back from the Garvaghy Road most years. The issue is still raw locally, even when it is quiet.
Portadown was the site of two of the most disturbing killings of the late Troubles. Robert Hamill, a 25-year-old Catholic father of four, was beaten to death by a loyalist mob in central Portadown on 27 April 1997 while four police officers sat in a Land Rover twenty feet away. No one was convicted of his murder. In 1999, the human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson, who lived in nearby Lurgan and represented the Hamill family and Drumcree Garvaghy Road residents, was killed by a loyalist car bomb. Both cases were the subject of major public inquiries into allegations of police collusion. The town carries the memory of both. Walk Market Street today and the intersection where Robert Hamill was attacked is the same one where the buses still pull in on a Saturday morning.
Portadown's People's Park, on the northern side of town, dates from 1909 and has a lake, ornamental gardens, and one of the best collections of rare trees in Northern Ireland, including several Northern Champion trees that are the largest specimens of their kind in the province. The town's other distinctive feature is the railway station, rebuilt in 1970 after the old Victorian station was damaged. The Enterprise train from Belfast to Dublin still stops here several times a day, the only fragment of the once-vast hub left in commercial service. The town has a population of around 32,000 at the 2021 census, and is now considered part of the Craigavon Urban Area along with Craigavon and Lurgan, although locally it is still very much its own place. The Portadown Albion football club, founded in 1924, plays at Shamrock Park.
Of all the things Portadown is now known for, the orchards remain the most quietly beloved. Half a million apple trees grow in the surrounding country, mostly Bramleys, and the Apple Blossom Festival in May is one of the most popular small festivals in the north. The novelist Maurice Leitch was born in Portadown in 1933. The folk musician Robin Morton, founder of Boys of the Lough, grew up here and trained as a singer. The international fashion designer Una Burke is from the town. The flutist Patrick Halpin played with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. The town has spent the last quarter-century rebuilding what the Troubles left damaged. The work is not finished. The orchards keep blooming anyway, every May, on schedule.
Portadown lies at 54.42°N, 6.46°W on the Upper Bann in north County Armagh, about 25 miles southwest of Belfast. From altitude the town is recognisable by the long curve of the River Bann running through it and the railway lines fanning out in three directions. The orchards of the surrounding north Armagh apple country show as dense regular patterns on the ground. Best viewed at 3,000-5,000 ft. Nearest airports: Belfast International (EGAA) about 14 nm northeast, Dublin (EIDW) about 60 nm south. Drumcree Church is visible on a low hill on the western bank of the Bann just north of the town centre.