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CRAIGAVON

CO. ARMAGH · IE

Craigavon

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 08 / 08

Craigavon · Co. Armagh

A 1965 plan for a linear city. The plan didn't land. The lakes did.

Craigavon is the most ambitious thing Northern Ireland tried to build in the 1960s and one of the most honest lessons it learned. The 1965 New Towns Act designated a planned settlement between Lurgan and Portadown that was supposed to absorb Belfast's overspill, hit 180,000 people by the year 2000, and become a linear city of motorways, separated paths, and modernist housing. It didn't. The Troubles started four years in. The oil shock came after that. The population peaked at roughly half what was promised, and the town the planners designed sits today inside the older towns it was meant to merge — adjacent rather than absorbing.

The name was a fight from the start. James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, was the first prime minister of Northern Ireland and the man who said "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people." Putting his name on a new town built in a mixed area was read by many as a statement of intent. Some of that reading turned out to be fair. Brownlow and the other big estates went up fast, in concrete that hasn't aged kindly, and the post-1969 reality dropped a lot of empty flats into a town that hadn't yet built a centre.

What's actually here, today, is more interesting than the failure narrative makes it sound. The Craigavon Lakes are genuinely good — two engineered lakes, a tarmac loop, a watersports centre that takes beginners on the south lake, and woods around the edges that don't feel manicured. The Black Paths — that 1960s network of underpasses for pedestrians and cyclists — are being slowly upgraded back into a real greenway. Rushmere is the third-biggest shopping centre in the North. The Seagoe Hotel does a decent room. And the South Lake Leisure Centre, opened to the public in 2020, has a 50-metre pool that's the largest of its kind on the island.

Don't come here for an old market square or a pub-music scene — those live four miles either side, in Lurgan and Portadown. Come for the lakes, a bike around the Black Paths, and a slightly uncomfortable look at what mid-century planners thought a city should be. The architecture is honest about its decade. Honest is its own kind of interesting.

Population

72,301 (urban area, 2021 — includes Lurgan and Portadown)

Walk score

A car town with a good lake walk bolted on

Founded

1965 (designated)

Coords

54.4471° N, 6.3878° W

01 / 08

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The new town

Designed in 1965. Half-built. Still here.

Craigavon was meant to be the heart of a linear city joining Lurgan and Portadown — 180,000 people by 2000. It got nowhere near. The Troubles, the oil crisis, and an ambition the ground couldn't hold.

The story → 02 The lakes

Two artificial lakes, one good walk.

Built in the early 1970s as balancing lakes for stormwater. They work. They're also where the town goes to be a town — kayaks, kids, dogs, a 5km loop you can do before lunch.

Walks → 03 The Black Paths

40 underpasses. No cars.

The 1960s planners separated walkers and cyclists from traffic with a network of underpasses and bridges — almost 40km of it. Long-neglected, slowly being repaired. Northern Ireland's longest greenway, by accident.

How to walk it →

02 / 08

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
The Seagoe Hotel restaurant	Hotel restaurant	££	On Upper Church Lane, technically the Portadown side of the BT63. Decent kitchen, locally-sourced bias, the Balcony bar does a passable pint. The default for a sit-down dinner if you're staying at the lakes.
Rushmere food court	Mall food court	£	Central Way. Inside the third-largest shopping centre in the North. Chain-heavy — Nando's, Costa, the usual — but it's where everyone actually eats on a Saturday. No pretence.

03 / 08

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Seagoe Hotel	4-star hotel	34 rooms at 22 Upper Church Lane, BT63 5JE. The main hotel for the new town. 30 minutes off the M1 to Belfast, walking distance to Portadown station.

04 / 08

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

The 1965 plan

A linear city that never linked up

The masterplan came out of the Ministry of Development in Northern Ireland and drew a settlement of 120,000 by 1981 and 180,000 by 2000, stretching between Lurgan and Portadown like a single belt. Designation came in 1965. The Troubles came in 1969. The 1973 oil crisis came after that, and the political will to build motorway-served new towns evaporated. The 2021 census put the urban area at 72,301 — and that includes Lurgan and Portadown, the two towns Craigavon was meant to swallow.

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon

The name

Craigavon was named after the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, who held the office from 1921 until his death in 1940. He's the man who said the parliament at Stormont was "a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state." Putting his name on a new town in mid-1960s Northern Ireland was read at the time as a unionist marker, and the reading wasn't paranoid. The town's politics have been complicated ever since.

A 1960s greenway, before the word existed

The Black Paths

The masterplan separated cars from people more thoroughly than almost any other UK new town. Forty-plus underpasses, six bridges, a network of paths long enough that you can cross the whole settlement without meeting a car. For decades it was overgrown and unloved. From 2024 onwards the Department for Infrastructure has been pumping in funding — £270,000, then a further £180,000 — to repair surfaces and lighting. It's slowly becoming what it was meant to be.

Engineered into existence

Lakes that were never lakes

The two Craigavon Lakes were dug in the early 1970s as balancing reservoirs — places to hold stormwater off the new town's hard surfaces and release it slowly into the streams that drain into Lough Neagh. They were a piece of drainage engineering that turned, almost by accident, into the centrepiece. North Lake is now a rainbow-trout fishery. Much of the site became a Local Nature Reserve in 2008. The original 1990 design study has been cited internationally as a model for how to build artificial lakes that actually work ecologically.

05 / 08

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Craigavon Lakes loop Tarmac path the whole way around both lakes. Flat. Buggies, dogs, joggers, herons. Start from the South Lake Watersports car park or the leisure centre. Anti-clockwise gets you the better light in the afternoon.

5 kmdistance

1h–1h 15mtime

Lakeland woods Looser trails through the planted woodland between the lakes and the Brownlow estates. Less manicured. Bring boots in winter — it gets soft.

2–3 kmdistance

40 mintime

The Black Paths The 1960s pedestrian/cycle network connecting Lurgan and Portadown via underpasses. Some sections are pristine, some are still being repaired in 2026. Pick up a route at blackpaths.org before you go — the unmapped bits have a way of dead-ending.

Up to 12 kmdistance

Half day on a biketime

06 / 08

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

The lakes do their best impression of being somewhere people meant to build. Trees come in, the path is dry, watersports start back up around April.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

The actual high season for the lakes — sailing courses, paddleboards, kids in the water. The leisure-centre pool is full. Book ahead for sessions.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep–Oct

Quietest of the three good seasons. The woods turn, the loop empties out, and you'll have most of the south lake to yourself on a weekday morning.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Honest answer: there isn't much. Short days, the watersports centre shuts down most activities, and the brutalist concrete looks worst in flat grey light. The leisure centre pool is the indoor option.

◐ Mind yourself

07 / 08

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Looking for a town centre

There isn't one in the conventional sense. The 'centre' is Rushmere — a covered shopping mall and retail park off Central Way. If you want a high street with a market square, you want Lurgan or Portadown, both four miles away.

Driving the M12 expecting a city

The M12 was built as the spur to a city that was never finished. It connects to almost nothing on the south end. Useful as a road. Strange as a piece of infrastructure.

The post-1969 housing estate tour

Brownlow, Tullygally, Drumgor — the early estates have a serious history but they're not visitor experiences. Read the books. Don't drive around staring.

Pub-crawling for trad music

It's not that kind of town. The pub-music culture lives in Lurgan and Portadown — older, denser, separate. Craigavon proper is hotel bars and chain places.

Getting there.

By car

Belfast to Craigavon is 25 miles, about 30 minutes on the M1. Junction 11 for Lurgan, junction 10 for Portadown, the M12 spur drops you in the middle.

By bus

Translink Goldline runs from Belfast Europa Bus Centre to Craigavon multiple times daily. Roughly 1h 35m to the leisure centre.

By train

Portadown station is the practical stop — direct trains from Belfast Great Victoria Street and Lanyon Place run every 20 minutes off-peak, around 45 minutes. From the station it's a short taxi or 251 bus to the lakes.

By air

Belfast International (BFS) is 30 minutes north on the M1. Belfast City (BHD) is 35 minutes east. Dublin Airport is 1h 15m by car.

Next on the tour

Co. Armagh

Armagh

The county town and ecclesiastical capital. Two cathedrals, a Georgian mall, a planetarium. Fifteen miles south.

Co. Monaghan

Monaghan

Across the border, drumlin country and the Rossmore estate. A different gear of small town.

Co. Louth

Carlingford

Down to the lough. Medieval streets, Slieve Foye behind, oysters in front. The opposite kind of town in every way.