Dunbrock School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Storey and a half high linear school building with attached teacher’s house of same height at southern end. School simply finished in harled and whitened walls over a painted black plinth course, natural slate roof and cast iron rainwater goods. Three of the five windows on the main west facade adjoining the Teachers house have been closed by unpainted concrete blocks giving an appearance of dereliction - particularly beside the newly restored teacher’s house. The house has new PVC windows, two dormers and new harled and whitened walls on its west facade. A barge overhangs the blank south gable of the house. The slates are flush with the north gable of the school and one on the southern gable of the house.

To the rear, the school windows are at high level, (double four pane casements in timber) a lean-to tin shed sticks out at a lower level.

The house has two PVC dormers at eaves level with a PVC back door and kitchen window below.

Around the building landscaping has been improved to the front and back of the house. The bitmac playground and former toilet block to the north are decaying rapidly.

Historical information

Built by theFishmongers Company in the 1830s as part of a number of similar schools included as improvement works to their estate. (See HB01/01/031 Tirglassan School in Banagher Ward). Architect of the school James Turnbull. Drawings are preserved in the Fishmonger’s Hall in London, entitled ‘Plans Elevations and sections of schools with master’s house proposed to be built at Dunbrock and Killycor on the Fishmonger’s Estate in Ireland. February 1833’. These show a building not unlike that of today but without dormers to the master’s house and with high windows to each side of the school. Toilets were shown as an integral part of girls’ and boys’ yards extending behind walls from the school and not the separate unit of the present construction. The building was described by the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the 1830s as: ‘Dunbrock, instituted 1833 150 males, 50 females, total 200 supported by the Company of Fishmongers’ and ‘Sunday school in Dunbrock, instituted 1833 60 males, 40 females, total 100 supported by the Company of Fishmongers’.

The National Education Board took over the running of the school in the 1870s and it operated as primary school for a further hundred years. It has been in use as a residence since that date.

References:

J S Curl The Londonderry Plantation 1609 - 1914 p.269-290

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol. 25 p.98

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

'Architecturally these designs are of minimum interest, but they are extremely interesting in that they show the remarkable degree of seriousness with which the company approached its commitment to educate the children of tenants. The existence of drawings demonstrates that even the humblest buildings on the Proportion were designed’ J S Curl. One of the most preserved examples of the schools designed by Turnbull for the Fishmongers, however its architectural value has been considerably eroded over the years and it is now not sufficiently preserved to list.