Survey Data
Reg No
31308107
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
School
Date
1895 - 1900
Coordinates
143558, 288513
Date Recorded
17/10/2010
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached six-bay single-storey national school, dated 1897; extant 1901, on a symmetrical plan. Closed, 1973. Now disused. Pitched slate roof on timber construction with clay ridge tiles centred on rendered chimney stack having lichen-covered cut-limestone chamfered capping supporting terracotta or yellow terracotta pots, and cast-iron rainwater goods on slightly overhanging timber boarded eaves having timber consoles with no rainwater goods to rear (west) elevation on exposed timber rafters. Roughcast walls on rendered plinth. Square-headed window openings centred on rusticated date stone ("1897") with cut-limestone sills, and concealed dressings framing six-over-six timber sash windows behind iron mesh panels. Square-headed flanking door openings with concrete steps supporting wrought iron bootscrapers, and rendered surrounds framing timber boarded or tongue-and-groove timber panelled doors. Road fronted.
Appraisal
A dishevelled national school erected to a standardised design for the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (cf. 31201010) representing an integral component of the late nineteenth-century built heritage of County Mayo with the architectural value of the composition, one succeeding a diagonally opposing school (1863) named as "Doogary School" on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey (surveyed 1894; published 1897), confirmed by such attributes as the symmetrical rectilinear plan form; and the decorative timber work embellishing a slightly oversailing roofline. A prolonged period of neglect notwithstanding, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, thus upholding the character or integrity of a national school making a pleasing visual statement in the streetscape.