Survey Data
Reg No
41401403
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Original Use
School
In Use As
Office
Date
1875 - 1880
Coordinates
274823, 330270
Date Recorded
01/04/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached six-bay single-storey school-house, dated 1875, having entrance projections recessed to each end, and with projecting block to rear. Now in use as private offices. Hipped slate roof, pitched to end projections, and with M-profile hipped roof to rear projection. Clay ridge tiles and limestone verges, cast-iron octagonal hopper and rainwater goods, and stepped red brick chimneystacks. Coursed rubble limestone walls with cut-stone quoins and low plinth course, date stone to west elevation. Gauged-brick square-headed window openings with block-and-start surround having timber nine-pane windows, rendered reveals and cut-stone sills. Square-headed door openings to entrance projections, with brick block-and-start surrounds and timber battened and recent timber panelled door opening onto limestone steps. Rear elevation divided into two units of three windows, separated by rubble wall dividing separate play areas, each half with own entrance to rubble limestone outbuilding. Bounded to west and north by stepped coursed rubble limestone wall with tooled limestone coping, square-plan ashlar gate piers to west having wrought-iron pedestrian gate. Prominently located to south-east of crossroads at Moy Otra and to north of Saint Mary's Catholic Church.
Appraisal
A finely detailed building, this school is an important part of the social and architectural heritage of Clontibret parish. Its simple form is enlivened by the use of red brick pleasingly contrasted with limestone walling, enhanced by original fixed windows and rainwater goods. The entrances to the north and south clearly articulate separate classrooms for girls and boys, as does the division of the yard to the east by a rubble wall and outbuildings, presumably used as toilets. The school is iconic of the schools being constructed by the Office of Public works in the late nineteenth century. Moys National School is prominently located at a crossroads on the main Dublin to Derry Road, and was of considerable social importance to the local Catholic community who established the nearby Saint Mary's Church about 1850. An Edwardian post box is incorporated into the boundary wall to north corner at junction.