I started this website in about 2003 after visiting Portadown for the first time since I left in 1956 at the age of fourteen. Having recently met Marian Chambers (née Mitchell) for the first time in 45 years, I also revived through her, my friendship with many of my form-mates of the three years I had been at Portadown College. Several, like Marian and myself, had kept a few mementos which they kindly lent me and it seemed enough to make a start on this truly nostalgic website. What else could I call it but...

PC '56

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Fortiter et humaniter

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This was the school motto at least as early as 1953, the year I moved to the Senior School, and probably much earlier. It means With courage and with courtesy. In our time it appeared on the school shield, as on the front cover on PC 56 shown on this page. Also on the shield were a castle after which the name Portadown was said to have been named; a swan signifying the College's (then) location on the bank of the River Bann; a lion "passant gardant"; a PC monogram; the motto below. The design of the shield resulted from a competition for school pupils in my earl years at the college, probably my first year when I was in Form 1A, From that time it replaced the monogram as the breast pocket design of the school blazer.

The pale blue and black colours of the magazine cover were, and still are, the school colours. The tie and rugby shirts are the same as in my time except that our rugby shirts had no shield - today's rugby shirts have the modern shield showing three lions rampant and two bezants, together with the motto, Fortiter et Humaniter.

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