Survey Data
Reg No
50070097
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Previous Name
Arbour Hill Infants' School
Original Use
School
In Use As
Museum/gallery
Date
1840 - 1860
Coordinates
314166, 234730
Date Recorded
04/11/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached T-plan four-bay single-storey former military school, built c.1850, now in use as museum. Central projecting gabled porch to east elevation. Pitched slate roof with red brick and cut limestone chimneystacks, cast-iron rainwater goods. Carved stone coping to gable ends, terracotta ridge tiles. Cut limestone walls to front (east), north and south elevations, rubble limestone walls, render removed, with plinth course to west elevation. Square-headed window openings, having cut limestone voussoirs and surrounds. Replacement uPVC windows to east elevation, tripartite timber sash windows to west and south elevations, containing six-over-six panes flanked by two-over-two panes, cut granite sills. Screen wall extending from west elevation to north and south of former school, containing four elliptical-headed door openings, having red brick block-and-start surrounds, replacement timber doors. Early twentieth-century lined-and-ruled rendered extensions to east and north. Located to east of graveyard of Church of the Sacred Heart, headstones leaning against west elevation facing graveyard.
Appraisal
This former infants’ school was built as a group of military related structures, including an adult military school, a former garrison chapel, a military graveyard, and a former detention barracks, all to the immediate south and west. Like the other structures, it has a lack of overt decoration, its pleasing character derived from well built stone masonry and simple forms. The school building was extended north in the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century. The building is currently utilized as a museum of the Irish United Nations’ Veterans’ Association (IUNVA), who also occupy the former caretaker’s house to the north.