844 Glenshane Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 7 bay wide former school building with a gabled central projection which has 2 narrow pointed windows retaining their former cast iron diamond glazing and above a pointed hood moulding over a plaque on a blank wall. On the E side of the projection there is a single modern window. On either side of the projection each wing has a central doorway with a 12 pane double hung sliding sash window on each side and over each door a 6 pane fanlight. All heads are square. One of the doors has been altered to greater width. Walls are smooth rendered, painted with plaster quoins not returned on the wing gables. Rafter feet are exposed under the gutters which are PVC. Roof has natural slates. The ridge of the projection is lower than the main ridge. The plaque inscription reads : Dungiven/male and female/national school/1893. There are no chimneys.

There are pairs of windows on the wing gables and the back return contains school meals accommodation.

The building appears to be used as a builders store.

Former school set back from the line of the Glenshane Road and just opposite Priory Lane. There is residential development on both sides. The ground around the building is concreted, may have been former playground area and the site has a high chain link fence.

Historical information

The building was an adaptation of a former church which was erected about here in 1819 to replace a former thatched chapel in the townland of Cashel established in 1776. Galleries were added to the present building in 1825-6. It was abandoned as a church in 1883 and 10 years later was adapted to a school building in 1893. The church building is described in the O.S. Memoirs as “a plain rectangular building 100 feet by 30 broad on the outside, placed parallel to and a short distance from the road to Maghera, and was erected in 1819. It has an entrance in each gable and another, the principal one, facing the road; the later is surmounted by an Italian stone cross with “In hoc signo vinces” underneath it. The walls are very substantially built, but the interior is not yet fitted out with pews. 2 galleries have been lately erected, one at each end …….” The building cost £450. The altar probably was in the long wall and the present projection may have been the sacristy with the principal entrance on the opposite side. The building underwent, therefore, considerable change in converting to school purposed.

References

Primary Sources
O.S. Map 1832 Londonderry sh. 25.
O.S. Map 1832 rev. Londonderry sh. 25
O.S. Memoirs of Ireland – Co Londonderry IV 1824, 1833-5 p. 8

Secondary Sources
Bunn Dungiven Days 1978 p. 41

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Not a building of any architectural pretensions but interesting as an example of a change of use from church to school in the late 19th cent. It has however some locally interesting social history as an early church building of 1819 replacing a former 18th cent. thatched chapel.