Ballyphilip Boys’ Primary School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Long, single storey, rubble-built gothic style school of 1853 by John O'Neil, with steep gabled roof and small porch. A large flat roofed extension was added to the rear in 1952 and the windows have had their stone mullions removed and metal frames installed. The building is sited at the junction of the Ballyphilip Road and Cook Street, SE of Portaferry.

The original front façade faces roughly S and is asymmetrical. The building was formerly entered to the W face of the off centre gabled projecting porch, however, this doorway has been neatly blocked. There is small steel framed window with chamfered sandstone dressings at top of former door opening. The porch gable has central decorative three light window with cavetto lintels and stone mullions. Central light does not have window but is filled with slate with inscription. The E face of the porch is blank. Stone parapet, decorative bellcote and Bangor blue slates to porch roof.

Four metal nine pane windows to left of porch and three to right, with chamfered stone dressings, chamfered concrete lintels and cills. These windows used to be three light, with each light separated by a stone mullion (two to each window) but these mullions were removed, the lintels and cills replaced and the metal window frames inserted. Buttresses between windows and diagonal buttresses to all corners of original building.

To E and W gables each have a single window, as front, with small stone dressed vent recess at gable apex. Fleur de lis finials to both gables. Chamfered base. Rear elevation of original school house has two windows as before to each side of much later projecting flat roofed corridors leading to large flat roofed extension, with both corridors and extension constructed in composite blocks with rock face with various regularly arranged steel windows. Extension has part basement [?for boiler].

Bangor blue slates and stone parapets to roof of original building. Widely spaced dentilled eaves course. Concrete school yard around entire complex.

Historical information

This school was built in 1853 by the Catholic parishioners of Portaferry, to designs by John O’Neil of Belfast. It was originally attended by both boys and girls, and remained as such until 1933, when a new girls’ school was constructed close by. The school was reroofed in 1951 and the flat roofed extension was added in 1952.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI D.552 Savage/Nugent Papers [This collection contains many documents relating to Portaferry and the surrounding area]
2 PRONI and Linen Hall Library ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory’ Vols.1-21, 1852-1900, (Belfast, Henderson [1852-65],
Belfast News-Letter [1865- ])
3 Linen Hall Library ‘Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland’ (Manchester 1856), p.592-95
4 PRONI OS/6/3/32/2 OS maps, 1st rev., 1860, Down sheet 32
5 PRONI Second ('Griffith's') valuation, 1863 [in print]
6 Linen Hall Library ‘Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland’ (Manchester 1870), pp.341-43
7 George Henry Bassett ‘County Down Guide and Directory’ (Dublin 1886)

Secondary sources
1 St. Patrick’s Church Ballyphilip 1762-1962 [Souvenir booklet] (Portaferry, 1962), pp.32-33, 39
2 G. Philip Bell, C.E.B. Brett, Sir Robert Matthew, 'Ulster Architectural Heritage Survey: Portaferry & Strangford'
(Belfast UAHS 1969)
3 'Guide to places of interest in Portaferry and the Upper Ards' (Upper Ards Historical Society, ?1995)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Long, single storey, rubble-built gothic style schoolhouse of 1853 by John O'Neil, with steep gabled roof (now largely missing) and small porch. A large flat-roofed extension was added to the rear in 1952 and the windows have had their stone mullions removed and metal frames installed. There is insufficient original historic fabric remaining for the building to meet the statutory test for listing.