112 and 112A Deerpark Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A pair of two-storey semi-detached houses, originally built as single-storey schools, with slated hipped roofs, and a central yellow brick chimney. Walls originally brick but now dry-dashed with limestone chippings. Terracotta ridge tiles and decorative finials. All windows modernised using plate glass. Inscription plaque on each house. Low return to rear of modernised appearance, on party line. Boundary walls of snecked basalt in rough courses.

Setting: the houses stand facing the main road in a very rural location.

Historical information

Built in 1897 to the designs of S.P. Close, architect, as boys’ and girls’ schools; plaque on no. 112 inscribed “The Countess Balzani Memorial Female National School 1897”; plaque on no. 112A inscribed “The Agnew Memorial Male National School 1897”; became private houses in 1980s.

References - Primary Sources

1. Inscription plaques on building.

Secondary Sources

1. A.E. McGuinness, Samuel Patrick Close: Architect (1842-1925), unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1990, pp 91-92, and plate 152.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a late Victorian building whose main interest depends on its inscription plaques which state its original function as a school, but whose original architectural character has been changed by inappropriate alterations.