Lurgan College

In lieu of the establishment of Lurgan Model primary school in 1863, the town of Lurgan required a secondary education school which met the educational needs of the growing industrial town. The owner of a local brewery, Samuel Watts, set out plans for an endowment fund in his will for the formation of a middle class, secondary school which provided education to boys in Agriculture, Classics and English. After Watts’s death in February 1850, a Trustee Committee was formed to ensure the £9000 in Watts’s will would contribute towards creating a new school. However, it was not until December 1872 that the Trustee Committee had gathered enough funds to commence construction of the school. The…

The school continues to rank within the top 20 Northern Irish secondary level schools in the Sunday Times Parent Power Survey. The school has received the necessary funding to proceed with plans to erect a new building, replacing all of the current accommodation except for the listed 1873 portion. Work was to commence in March 2009, but this still has not happened due to departmental cuts.