FIGURE 6

confirmed in 1629 by the grant of the right to hold a Friday market and two fairs each year, although these were probably already in existence before the formal grant was made.

Where precisely was this flourishing early seventeenth-century market town? In the late seventeenth century, the landlord, Arthur Brownlow, copied an estate rental from 1635 into his leasebook.6 Fromthis source we can identify a number of holdings whose existence are known later. The evidence suggests that the town was laid out along a roadway, possibly much older than the town itself, that followed a ridge of high land that was safe from flooding (hence the name Lurgan from the Irish Lorgain meaning ‘a long low ridge or a strip of land’). The Pound River was to the west. The cluster of houses was laid out close to the castle around the junction of present day Castle Lane and the main street of the town, and it was here that the market house was located. From this it extended south-eastwards down what is now High Street. The surveys hint at what the town looked like. Framed houses are mentioned, which suggests that houses were made of timber. It is possible that, as in the late seventeenth century, these houses were raised up on a stone base to prevent the timber posts supporting the frame from rotting.

PROGRESS STALLED (1630–60) During the 1630s new settlers probably continued to arrive in the town. In c.1630, when the settler forces were mustered as a militia, Brownlow was credited with forty-two tenants, which may well represent the adult male inhabitants of the town. Certainly there were strong continuities in names with the 1622 list. About half the surnames, however, had not been there in 1622 and this suggests that there continued to be a steady influx of new settlers seeking houses, probably in the town, along with SAMPLE land in the surrounding countryside.7 That influx ground to a halt in the early 1640s with the outbreak of the Irish insurrection on the evening of 22 October 1641. The depositions taken in the aftermath of that insurrection provide much of the documentary evidence for Lurgan in the 1640s. Various deponents described the town as having been burnt, but how much of the settlement was actually consumed by fire is

6 Gillespie, ‘Settlement and Survival’, pp. 150–3. 7 R.J. Hunter (ed.), ‘Men at Arms’: The Ulster settlers, c.1630, Belfast: Ulster Historical

Foundation, 2012, pp. 26–7.

FIGURE 5

‘Maps of the escheated counties of Ireland: Parte of the Barony of Oneilan’ by Josias Bodley, c.1609/1610.

Image reproduced by kind permission of the Special Collections & Archives, Queen’s University Belfast.