Survey Data
Reg No
15400103
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Original Use
School
Date
1820 - 1840
Coordinates
245004, 279593
Date Recorded
07/10/2004
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached three-bay single-storey former national school, built c.1840, with projecting single-bay gable-fronted porch to front façade (west). Lean-to extension to north side. Now derelict and out of use. Pitched natural slate roof with projecting eaves course, cast-iron rainwater goods and rendered chimneystack to either end. Lime rendered walls. Square-headed window openings with cut stone sills having paired multi-pane timber casement windows to main body of building and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash window to front face to porch (west). Square-headed opening to north face of porch having timber sheeted door. Set back from road own grounds adjacent to rural road junction and site of early nineteenth century Roman Catholic chapel (demolished).
Appraisal
A pretty small-scale mid nineteenth-century national school, which retains its early form and character despite being out of use for a considerable period of time. It retains most of its early fabric including early timber casement windows. This school is typical of the many rural schools built in Ireland during the early-to-mid nineteenth-century, few of which are now extant. This school appears to have replaced an earlier school house, c.1820, which was sited to the immediate front (west) of the present structure. Tullystown Crossroads was also the site of a Roman Catholic chapel in the early nineteenth-century, suggesting that this school was built for the education of Catholic children and its construction may have been sponsored by a local landowner. This unassuming school house is an interesting survival and adds an historic veneer to the local area as the earliest purpose-built educational facility still extant.