page_title: Portadown
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Portadown / History
caption_attribution_description: Up to the "wee North" today with a fine Lawrence shot of High Street in Portadown. A fine broad street, big well-built premises, gas lamps, and horse apples in abundance - all might mean this was late 1800s...? ....Or perhaps not the late 1800s after-all. Thanks to today's contributions (and the high-res megazoom version) the community's eagle-eyes spotted an apparently dated shop-window display suggesting a date of 1906. [/photos/gnmcauley/ Niall McAuley]'s census and street-directory investigations would seem to corroberate this - as Hoy's boot-sellers (far left) seem to have left Portadown sometime between 1901 and 1910. Perhaps the "cheap boots sale" we see advertised was actually a closing/relocation sale? Courtney (the "Italian Warehouseman"?) seems to have been around for a few years after this image. And is it no wonder he did a busy trade, given that (as advertised) he always had "pickles in stock"!&#160;:) Photographer: Robert French Collection: Lawrence Photograph Collection Date: Catalogue range c.1865-1914. Possibly c.1906 NLI Ref: L_ROY_09282 You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie
context_page_description: Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 24 mi southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population of about 22,000 at the 2011 Census. For some purposes, Portadown is treated as part of the "Craigavon Urban Area", alongside Craigavon and Lurgan.
  Although Portadown can trace its origins to the early 17th century Plantation of Ulster, it was not until the Victorian era and the arrival of the railway that it became a major town. It earned the nickname "hub of the North" due to it being a major railway junction; where the Great Northern Railway's line diverged for Belfast, Dublin, Armagh and Derry. In the 19th and 20th centuries Portadown was also a major centre for the production of textiles.
  Portadown is the site of the long-running Drumcree dispute, over yearly Orange marches through the mainly Catholic part of town, which has often led to violence. In the 1990s, the dispute intensified and drew worldwide attention to Portadown.
caption: High Street in the early 1900s
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