21 September 1795
The Battle of the Diamond
A planned confrontation at a crossroads called The Diamond, a mile north of the village, between the Catholic Defenders and the Protestant Peep o' Day Boys. The Defenders lost. Around half a dozen were killed. That same evening the victors walked back to James Sloan's house on Loughgall's Main Street and founded what they called the Orange Order. Sloan was its first grandmaster. Within months the winter of 1795–96 saw thousands of Catholics driven out of County Armagh — "the Armagh outrages". The crossroads is still there, signposted and unremarkable. The house is the museum.
Where it started
Sloan's House
82–86 Main Street. The whitewashed building with the small front door. It is now the Museum of Orange Heritage, run by the Order itself, and it is honest about being that — uniforms, banners, the founding story told from the Order's own point of view. Whatever you think of any of it, it is the actual room. Tuesday to Saturday, ring ahead, the hours move with the season.
8 May 1987
The Loughgall ambush
An eight-man IRA East Tyrone Brigade unit drove a JCB digger with a bomb in its bucket at the small RUC station on Main Street. The British Army's SAS were waiting in and around the building, having had the intelligence for at least ten days. All eight IRA men were killed. A civilian, Anthony Hughes, who drove into the kill zone in his car with his brother, was shot dead by the SAS; his brother was wounded. It is the highest IRA loss in any single incident of the Troubles, and the families have been in court about it ever since — Strasbourg in 2001, legacy inquests still moving in the 2020s. The station has been replaced. The road sign at the spot is, on any given month, either there or removed.
Cecilia Cope, 1879
Why there are no pubs
The Copes had been the landlords of Loughgall since the early 1600s — Anthony Cope of Hanwell, Oxfordshire, granted lands in the Plantation of Ulster. Generations later, Cecilia Cope, the Victorian lady of the manor and an enthusiastic temperance campaigner, bought the licences off every publican in the village and opened the Rock Coffee Tavern in their place in July 1879. The pubs never came back. It is the only village of its size in Ireland, north or south, you can walk end-to-end without passing a bar.
Imported, then perfected
The Bramleys
Loughgall is the heart of the Armagh Bramley, the cooking apple that turns up in your tart. The Cope estate was already growing apples in the 18th century — Henry Cope brought English varieties in — but the Bramley itself only arrived in 1884, when a Mr Nicholson of Cranagill, just up the road, bought sixty seedlings from Henry Merryweather of Nottinghamshire and planted them out. By the 1920s it was the dominant apple in Armagh. Today it is about ninety percent of the crop. The Armagh Bramley has Protected Geographical Indication status from the EU, the same kind of badge as Champagne.
Loch gCál
The lake
The 37-acre lake inside the country park is the Lough that Loughgall takes its name from — Loch gCál, lake of the cabbages, supposedly. It is well stocked, well walked, and the loop around it is the easiest hour you can spend in the village.