School in Landscape

Detached five-bay two-storey school house, endowed 1810; opened 1831, on a U-shaped plan with single-bay full-height gabled projecting end bays. Renovated, ----, to accommodate continued alternative use. Pitched slate roof on a U-shaped plan with clay ridge tiles, paired rendered central chimney stacks having capping supporting terracotta or yellow terracotta pots, rooflights, perforated timber bargeboards to gables with timber finials to apexes, and replacement uPVC rainwater goods on decorative timber eaves boards on rendered eaves. Rendered walls on rendered plinth. Square-headed central door opening with step threshold, and concealed dressings framing replacement glazed timber boarded half-door. Square-headed window openings with cut-granite sills, and concealed dressings framing one-over-one timber sash windows having cast-iron lattice glazing bars. Square-headed window openings (end bays) with cut-granite sills, timber cruciform mullions, and concealed dressings framing timber casement windows having cast-iron lattice glazing bars. Set in landscaped grounds.

A school house representing an important component of the early nineteenth-century built heritage of south County Wexford with the architectural value of the composition, 'an excellent school house with apartments for the master and mistress built at an expense of £500 by the late Mrs. Erith Paul [(née Drake)] who…endowed the school with £800 and with 2½ acres of ground for the use of the teachers' (Lewis 1837 II, 715), confirmed by such attributes as the symmetrical footprint centred on a restrained doorcase; the diminishing in scale of the openings on each floor producing a graduated visual impression with those openings showing pretty lattice glazing panels; and the decorative timber work embellishing the roofline. Having been well maintained, the form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, thus upholding the character or integrity of a school house making a pleasing visual statement in a sylvan street scene.