Former Girls School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey rubble schist construction with sandstone trim, natural slated roof, six bays long with staircase returns. When the building was a school there were several entrances and six classrooms.

The south east facade has four pairs of sliding sash windows on each floor trimmed with sandstone, segmental heads, eight panes each, at eaves level, walls carried up to form four pediments over each pair of windows barge stones and kneelers. At the south end projects the earlier staircase return with an external door on each side and single windows disposed about its three external walls. Between the return and the main facade a chimney protrudes and carries up above eaves with steeply splayed shoulders. The quoins as elsewhere are trimmed in sandstone. The other facades are similarly treated. The north west façade is strengthened with a shouldered buttress. One chimney stack projects from this façade.

The pitched return slated roofs are gabled with sandstone barge stones and each gable has a small circular vent oculus. On the ridge of the main roof there are two large roof ventilators, pinnacled and covered with lead.

The staircase at the north corner is a later addition in modern construction. It contains the entrance door and is lit by a rooflight in the flat roof.
The building was originally single storey and the difference in rubble stonework is easily discerned.
The building is sited on a cramped site near the top of Malvern Terrace at right angles to it and below the site of St Columb’s Church.It is seperated from the church by a school playground which is several feet above the school but much below the level of the church grounds. There is a narrow space encompassing the building with access to it from Malvern Terrace.

Historical information

The building was begun in 1874 as a single storey structure replacing the national school in Fountain Hill, when Dr Philip Devlin was parish priest, (1872-81) and the 1st floor added when Charles McFaul was parish priest, (1881-1915). It is likely that Croom & Toye were the architects for the enlarged building. The structure ceased as a school when a new primary school was erected in Dungiven Road c1982 and then became a parish hall replacing St Patrick’s Hall in Spencer Road which had been destroyed in 1975. The boundary wall between school and church was completed in 1883. Second staircase added in late 1950s.

References:

Parish records.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
V. Authorship
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

A fine stone built national school building in a quasi Italianate style