Lisnamuck Primary School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Long single-storey gable-ended schoolhouse built in 1844 extended to its present length and porches added in 1895. The school closed c.1981 and served as a community hall for a time, but is presently disused.

The building is rectangular in plan with entrance porches at both ends for the separate girls and boys classrooms. The porches are also rectangular but have canted southern corners. The main roof is pitched and gabled and in natural slate. There is a centrally placed ridge chimneystack with a corbelled cap and two plain fireclay pots. The roofs to the porches are lean-to; hipped on the southwest side due to the splayed wall. There is a shallow eaves course. Rainwater goods are cast-iron. Walls are roughcast. The base of the each wall is painted in a contrasting colour as a plinth. Window frames to the classrooms are timber with 6/9 Georgian-like panes. The upper sashes open in hopper fashion. Window frames to the gables are fixed lights; that to the east is single light while that on the western side is two light. Doors are timber sheeted; those to the porches have plain over lights.

Front elevation faces northwest. At left and right on the main gables are porches and on the front face of each there is a door opening. Main façade is symmetrical. At centre there is a small datestone inscribed ‘Lisnamuck Public Elementary School, 1895’. To either side there are three evenly spaced flat-headed window openings. Porch to the northeast gable serves as an entrance porch and cloaks space while that to the southwest gable now serves as an annex to the kitchen.

Northeast gable has lean to porch at centre and its end wall contains a small window opening. Main gable is blank except for small blind opening in apex.

Southeast rear elevation has three evenly spaced window openings either side of dividing yard wall. At left is the porch and splayed rear corner of this is blank. Northeast porch is on the right and the rear wall of this is also blank.

Southwest gable has lean to porch at centre and end wall contains a small window opening. Main gable has doorway (in front of porch) and there is a small blind opening in apex.

Service Block

The yard to the rear is divided with low wall; presumably originally intended to segregate boys and girls. On the southeast site boundary there is a much later linear free-standing toilet block with boys and teachers toilets on the western side and girls to the east. Dividing yard wall runs into front of this block

The block has a lean-to roof with a high central section containing a water cistern. It is constructed of concrete blocks. The roof is sheeted with corrugated iron. Two windows in the south façade have Crittall-style steel frames. Doors are timber sheeted. There is a screen wall shielding both the girls and boys entrances. On the southern side there is a single steel framed window. Door and window openings are flat-headed. This is composed of 5 cells, with two for the boys and two for the girls while to the centre there is an externally accessed WC, presumably for teachers. The girls side has a lobby and a WC cubicle while on the boys side the lobby contains a wide urinal and a WC cubicle.

Setting

The school in a rural location on the southern side of the Fivemile Straight just west of the crossroads with the Lisnamuck Road, 4km west of Maghera It is set back behind a low stone wall with rough stone coping. There are two pedestrian gateways with square piers with shallow pyramidal caps and wrought-iron gates. The site falls gently from northeast to southwest.

Roof natural slate
Walling rendered/stone
Windows timber
RW goods cast iron

Historical information

The date stone of 1895 on the front of this former schoolhouse is misleading, as it actually refers to the date of the extension to the original school. This was built in 1844 and is shown on the OS map of 1854 as ‘Lisnamuck National Schools’.

The plural ‘schools’ reflects the fact that the school catered for male and female children, the girls originally occupying a smaller classroom. By 1890 their numbers had outgrown this, prompting the school authorities to apply to the Commissioners for National Schools for grant aid towards extending the building. An (unsigned) plan of the same year shows that initially adding of returns was proposed for the schoolhouse, complete with fashionable faux timbering to the gables, but by 1894 a simpler scheme involving lengthening at one end and the addition of the porches was settled upon. Work on this was completed in September of the following year, with the aid of a grant of £272 from the Commissioners. The school was still agitating for new desks for the extended building for some years after this, however.

The present toilet block was built in the mid 20th-century, replacing a smaller one which is shown on the OS 25in map of 1926.

The school (later Lisnamuck Primary School), was still open in 1976, but is believed to have closed in c.1981. In the years following this the building witnessed some community use, including a meeting and performance place for a local drama group.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI ED/1/25 (1832-46)
2 PRONI ED/6/1/5/2 (1845-54)
3 OSNI OS6-5-36-2 (1854)
4 PRONI ED/3/190 (1890-96)
5 PRONI ED/14/E/20 (1922-26)
6 OSNI OS10-5-36-9-2 (1926)
7 OSNI OS11-77-3-1 (1976)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Long single-storey gable-ended schoolhouse built in 1844 extended to its present length and porches added in 1895. Formerly well preserved example of a small 19th century schoolhouse, largely unaltered since it was extended in 1895. It is of a type becoming increasingly rare and represents significant social history in relation to the growth of education. However its interest has been compromised by the loss of much historic fabric.