Masonic Hall

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single storey, hipped roof former school house of 1816 with canted bays and porch to front, now a Masonic Hall. The building is set on the W side of Newcastle Road, within the small village of Seaforde.

The front façade faces E and is symmetrical To the centre is a small gabled porch with Georgian paned fixed light window to front (gabled) face. Above this is a small ledge with a blank narrow panel above.
To the S face of the porch is a recess which originally housed the main entrance door, but is now blocked. To either side of the porch is a canted bay with hipped slated roof and Georgian paned sash windows.

To the S façade there is a small projecting flat roofed porch, with plain sheeted door to the E face. To the W this small porch abuts a hipped roof rear extension, which has a small two pane window to its S face. The remaining faces of this extension appear to be blank.

The N façade is blank, as is the rear, though there are indications that two windows to the rear have been blocked up.

The front, N and S elevations are all finished in painted lined render. The rear elevation is in unpainted rough cast. The main roof and that to the extension are both hipped and slated, and have overhangs. The main roof has two rendered chimney stacks and a small central ventilation finial.

There is a lawn with central pathway to the front of the building, enclosed (to E) by a low rubble wall with broad central wrought iron (farm-like) gate with square piers and concave pyramidal granite caps.

Historical information

This building was originally a school house, built 1816 with the assistance of Lady Harriet Forde. It is shown much as today on the valuation plan of c.1838 and recorded in the 1836 valuation returns as a ‘female school’, which also incorporated a residence for the mistress. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of December 1836 tell us that the building was ‘undergoing repair’ at that point, which may be a reference to the addition of the bays, for though these are shown on the abovementioned plan of c.1838, they are not listed in the dimensions recorded by the valuers in 1836. The Memoirs also tell us that at that point 75 girls of all denominations attended the school where they were taught English and ‘plain needlework’.

In the second valuation of c.1860 the building is referred to as the ‘Church Education Society’s female school. The school itself appears to have closed in the some time prior to 1925 (it is not listed in the Belfast and Ulster street directory-in which Seaforde appears for the first time in this year). The building now serves as a Masonic Hall.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI D.366 Forde papers
2 PRONI OS/6/3/37/1 OS map, Down sh 37, 1834
3 PRONI VAL/1B/387 1st valuation, Loughinisland, 1836
4 Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland: Parishes of Co Down IV’, (QUB 1992) [1836],
pp.94, 96
5 PRONI VAL/1D/3/19 Valuation plan of Seaforde, 1836-38
6 PRONI 2nd valuation, Loughinisland, c.1860 [in print]
7 PRONI VAL/2D/3/14 Valuation plan of Seaforde, c.1860
8 PRONI OS/8/152/1 OS plan of Seaforde, 1904
9 PRONI VAL/3G/95/1 Valuation plan of Seaforde, 1935-56

Secondary sources
1 C.E.B. Brett ‘Historic buildings, groups of buildings….East Down’ (Belfast UAHS 1973), p.30

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Single storey, hipped roof former school house of 1816 with canted bays and porch to front, now a Masonic Hall. Evidence suggests that the bays were added in c.1836. The building has group value with the other Seaforde estate buildings.