Trihill National School

Detached five-bay two-storey school, built c.1830, now derelict. Pitched slate roof having cast-iron rainwater goods. Cast-iron stove flue to gables. Lime rendered over random rubble walls. Square-headed openings with remains of six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows to ground floor and three-over-three pane to first floor, with tooled limestone sills. Draughted and pecked cut limestone surrounds to windows behind lime render with flat cut-stone arch to heads. Segmental-headed entrance with double-leaf timber ledged and braced door and with fanlight above with radial mullions, cruciform keystone and cut-limestone plaque inscribed: "TRYHILL {sic] NATIONAL SCHOOL". Square-headed entrance openings to outer rear bays. Large recent opening to central rear bay with steel beam supporting wall above. Single-storey outbuilding to north-east and two-storey former schoolmasters’ house to north-west. Set back from road in open ground with random rubble fieldstone boundary wall to front, hedges to side and rear.

The scale of this former national school is testament to the high regard for the education of the local community, both boys and girls. A two-storey building, it is unusual insofar as the boys were educated on one floor and the girls on the other, instead of in separate parts of the same floor. Though meant to be multi-denominational, the keystone above the door has been fashioned into a crude cross, a subtle signal of the school’s Catholic leaning. Once an important social centre for the local residents, this former schoolhouse is of social and architectural significance to the area.