Former Teacher’s House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2 storey former teacher’s residence serving the now replaced Rallagh School.

The entrance elevation is 3 bays wide with modern projecting gabled porch redbrick built to cill level, door on flanking wall. On each side a single 8 pane vertical hardwood window. At first floor over the entrance porch a centre gablet and in it a pair of 6 pane vertical windows. The main wall of the front elevation is faced with random rubble sandstone with redbrick trim to windows. Decorative wood barges to gablet and exposed rafter feet to the flat eaves on each side. PVC gutters and downpipes.

The gable and rear walls are roughcast rendered. There is a single storey back return. Roof slated with Bangor blues and red ridge tiles. Windows to gables and rear are all modern types. A wall 2 metres high runs back from that gable which faced the former school screening the house yard from the school yard.

The house is sited at right angles to Rallagh Road and beyond the church hall which replaced Rallagh School.

Historical information

The O.S. Memoirs describes a school at Rallagh “School house stone and lime, slated”. As well as being the parish school it was supported by the Association for Discountenancing Vice. There is no mention of a teacher’s house. However it is thought that there has been a school and residence here since c1820. John McCloskey states “near Rallagh Church, there is a Lancasterian School built by subscription of the different landed proprietors ……. a comfortable house has been erected, containing two spacious well-lighted classrooms, besides apartments for the teacher. The last Principal teacher was Mr T Glenn, who has spent 12 years there and retired to Leicestershire and the school closed in 1961 when it was converted to a church hall and rebuilt. The present occupant of the house had the house much renovated in 1992 and changed the character of it in the process. It is still in the ownership of the church.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1830 Londonderry sh. 30.
2. O.S. Map 1830 Rev. 1905 Londonderry sh. 30.
3. John McCloskey, Statistical Reports of Six Derry Parishes 1821, p. 87.
4. O.S. Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Co Londonderry X, 1833-34, 1838
Ed by Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams, Q.U.B. p. 111
5. Benbradagh No. 28, 1998
6. Present occupant (2000).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A small 2 storey stone built teacher’s residence which has been much changed in visual character by renovations and extensions. It retains its former front elevation which is faced with random rubble stonework and openings trimmed with redbrick but a gabled projecting entrance porch has been added which mars the impression. The school has been replaced by a simple church hall in the same location.