Survey Data
Reg No
11901302
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social, Technical
Previous Name
Scoil Muire Náisiúnta Cailíní
Original Use
School
In Use As
School
Date
1955 - 1960
Coordinates
275804, 226578
Date Recorded
14/10/2002
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached twelve-bay double-height national school, dated 1957, with single-bay single-storey flat-roofed recessed entrance bay to west gable end and twelve-bay single-storey flat-roofed parallel range along rear elevation to north. Extended, c.1990, comprising three-bay single-storey end bay to east. Gable-ended roof with fibre-cement slate. Concrete ridge tiles. Roughcast chimney stacks. Timber eaves. Iron rainwater goods. Flat-roofed to entrance bay and to 'corridor' parallel range to rear to north. Bitumen felt. Roughcast walls. Unpainted. Cut-stone date stone/plaque. Square-headed window openings. Concrete sills. Multi-pane timber casement windows. Square-headed door openings. Glazed timber panelled doors. Set back from road in own grounds. Tarmacadam forecourt (carpark) to front. Lawns to west. Detached eight-bay single-storey flat-roofed cast-concrete shelter, c.1960, to north with open colonnaded front. Flat-roofed. Concrete. No rainwater goods. Roughcast walls. Unpainted. Square-headed openings along front elevation forming colonnade with cast-concrete circular piers.
Appraisal
Saint Mary's Girls National School is a fine example of a typical Office of Public Works design for the Board of Education. Although somewhat austere in scale the front (south) elevation is composed of graceful proportions and indicates the internal arrangement on the outside as window openings are grouped into three (representing four classrooms inside). The school has been little changed over the remainder of the century with the exception of the extension to east, which disregards existing proportions. Of social and historic interest as the educational centre of the locality the school also represents mid twentieth-century attempts to improve the standard of education of the rural population throughout the country. The shelter to the north is also of some technical interest, having exploited new developments in concrete in its construction. The school and shelter form a compact group that is part of a further, larger group including an earlier school (11901303/KD-13-03) and the contemporary Catholic church (11901301/KD-13-01).