Cloongee National School

Detached six-bay single-storey national school, dated 1862; built 1862-3; opened 1863; extant 1895, on a cruciform plan with single-bay single-storey gabled projecting breakfront porches to side elevations. In use, 1925. Renovated, 2010, to accommodate continued private residential use. Replacement hipped slate roof on a U-shaped plan with pitched (gabled) slate roofs to porches, ridge tiles, rendered chimney stacks having lichen-covered cut-limestone chamfered capping supporting pots, lichen-covered cut-limestone coping to gables, and plastic rainwater goods on eaves boards on boxed cut-limestone eaves. Part creeper- or ivy-covered repointed coursed or snecked limestone walls on cut-limestone chamfered plinth with cut-limestone flush quoins to corners. Square-headed window openings centred on drag edged rusticated cut-limestone date stone ("1862") with cut-limestone sills, and cut-limestone lintels framing replacement six-over-nine timber sash windows. Set in landscaped grounds.

A national school erected to a standardised design for the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (cf. Glenisland National School (1870), Glenisland) representing an integral component of the mid nineteenth-century built heritage of the rural environs of Foxford. Having been well maintained, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original or sympathetically replicated fabric, thus upholding the character or integrity of a national school making a pleasing, if somewhat inconspicuous visual statement in a sylvan setting.