Lecture hall (former schoolhouse)

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Relatively plain, single storey, hipped roof schoolhouse of c.1835, with small porch addition of 1909. The building recently served as a church lecture hall but is now used as a store. The property is set on a rise on the E side of Drumaghlis Road, just S of Kilmore Presbyterian Church, roughly 3½ miles E of Ballynahinch.

The gabled entrance porch is to the short W elevation, and has a timber sheeted door to its S face. To its W gabled face there is a boarded up window with small panel above. Apparently this panel is inscribed ‘1909’, but a mixture of creeping plant growth and weathering to the panel has obscured the inscription.

The S façade of the main portion of the building has four boarded up window openings. The short E façade is blank.

The N façade has five semicircular headed sash windows (9/6), over which plastic glazing has been placed.

The whole façade is finished in unpainted rough cast render and the hipped roof is slated. There appear to be no rw goods.

To the immediate SE of the building the ground level rises considerably and to the N there is a steep drop in ground level.

Historical information

The building was originally a schoolhouse and dates from c.1840. It is shown on the OS map of 1858 and marked ‘National school’. In the early 1900s [?1909] a new schoolhouse built on the opposite side of Drumaghlis Road, after which this building became a lecture hall, associated with the near by Kilmore Presbyterian church. It appears to have continued as such until the 1980s.

The property is now vacant and used primarily as a store.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI OS/6/3/23/1 OS map, Down sh 23, 1834
2 PRONI OS/6/3/23/2 OS map, Down sh 23, 1858
3 PRONI OS/6/3/23/3 OS map, Down sh 23, c.1901
4 PRONI OS/6/3/23/4 OS map

Secondary sources
1 C.E.B. Brett ‘Historic buildings…East Down’ (Belfast 1973), p.51

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Small, well proportioned, single storey, hipped roof schoolhouse of c.1835, with porch addition of 1909. Similar in appearance and alignment to Kilmore Sextons house which flanks the other side of the graveyard surrounding Kilmore Presbyterian Church.The building recently served as a church hall but is now used as a store. It is of special interest for its style, proportion, local historical interest and its setting which is mature and picturesque. Its group value with the buildings around the church is also important.