Oct 3, 2026 · 12 min · 9 segments
For almost three decades, Garvaghy Road in Portadown has been at the centre of one of Northern Ireland’s most enduring disputes over parades, identity, history and territory. In 2026, the Drumcree…
The name reaches back to a time when this was an agricultural land on the edge of Portadown, long before the town grew around it and the fields were paved by streets.
In the decades after the Second World War redevelopment and the demolition of the older working class housing altered the shape of Portadown's Catholic community.
During the Troubles, Garvachie Row became a place where Catholic families displaced by sectarian intimidation could find safety among their own community.
hemmed in by hostile territory, bordered sharply by loyalist housing and estates.
For decades, the Orange Order, an organisation that has held strong anti-Catholic views, insisted that walking down this road was their traditional rite, a 200-year-old path from Drunkree Church.
But the 1990s residents were describing the proposed parade as triumphalist and intimidating, an annual reminder of the political and religious order in which they felt their community had historically been subordinated.
To a Catholic and nationalist community, the march was not a harmless display of culture, but fundamentally designed to provoke and intimidate the neighbourhood.
Inevitably, as the troubles worsened, opposition to the march from nationalist residents grew, and the dispute became a flashpoint.
In July 1997, before dawn, the British Army and police placed the Garvahy Road under virtual martial law.
They pinned the residents inside their own homes behind barricades of coiled, barbed wire.
They did it to clear a path for the Protestant Fraternal Order so they could march past their windows.
Loyalist paramilitaries brought terror to the edges of the estates, culminating in the horrific 1998 petrol bombing that claimed the lives of three young children, the Quinn brothers.
The Orange Order has not marched from Drumcrie church down the Garvahy Road since 1997.
The Parades Commission was established in 1998 partly as a consequence of the Drumcrie crisis and for almost three decades the dispute settled into the background of the north of Ireland's political life.
The name reaches back to a time when this was an agricultural land on the edge of Portadown, long before the town grew around it and the fields were paved by streets.
In the decades after the Second World War redevelopment and the demolition of the older working class housing altered the shape of Portadown's Catholic community.
During the Troubles, Garvachie Row became a place where Catholic families displaced by sectarian intimidation could find safety among their own community.
hemmed in by hostile territory, bordered sharply by loyalist housing and estates.
For decades, the Orange Order, an organisation that has held strong anti-Catholic views, insisted that walking down this road was their traditional rite, a 200-year-old path from Drunkree Church.
But the 1990s residents were describing the proposed parade as triumphalist and intimidating, an annual reminder of the political and religious order in which they felt their community had historically been subordinated.
To a Catholic and nationalist community, the march was not a harmless display of culture, but fundamentally designed to provoke and intimidate the neighbourhood.
Inevitably, as the troubles worsened, opposition to the march from nationalist residents grew, and the dispute became a flashpoint.
In July 1997, before dawn, the British Army and police placed the Garvahy Road under virtual martial law.
They pinned the residents inside their own homes behind barricades of coiled, barbed wire.
They did it to clear a path for the Protestant Fraternal Order so they could march past their windows.
Loyalist paramilitaries brought terror to the edges of the estates, culminating in the horrific 1998 petrol bombing that claimed the lives of three young children, the Quinn brothers.
The Orange Order has not marched from Drumcrie church down the Garvahy Road since 1997.
The Parades Commission was established in 1998 partly as a consequence of the Drumcrie crisis and for almost three decades the dispute settled into the background of the north of Ireland's political life.
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