Ballyclare High School, 31 Rashee Road, Ballyclare, Co Antrim, BT39 9HJ

Ballyclare High School is a mid-twentieth-century school complex on Rashee Road, comprising two main buildings of distinct periods. The earlier building, constructed around 1950, is a single-storey multi-bay block with a hipped slate roof finished with red and blue/black clay round ridge tiles. It features square-headed metal casement windows separated by strip banding. The principal structure, built around 1955, is a two-storey rectangular brick schoolhouse with Art Deco and Modernist influenced detailing. This main block has a flat roof with hipped natural slate sections, moulded cast-iron gutters with rectangular embossed downpipes, and smooth-rendered projecting eaves. The two-storey entrance block projects at the right end with a flat roof, whilst a single-storey flat-roofed block extends along the entire north elevation.

The walling is constructed in English Garden Wall-bonded red brick over a plinth with concrete dressings. Original metal windows have largely been replaced with square-headed uPVC casements set in continuous concrete sills and lintels. The east elevation features three windows per floor, with the ground floor surmounted by an additional shortened band of windows and blocked porthole windows to either side. The entrance block's left bay projects slightly and contains a first-floor vertical slit window above a square-headed entrance beneath a flat-headed concrete canopy. The door is replacement timber and glazed with an overlight. The south elevation has tiles corbelled to the eaves with bands of windows to each floor. The west elevation ground floor is partly abutted by a glazed single-storey linking block. The north elevation's exposed section contains one first-floor window and a band of shortened clerestorey windows above the abutting block.

The school is situated below road level in a tarmac parking lot, separated from the pavement by a brick boundary wall with concrete coping and accessed via metal gates. The wider school complex contains numerous blocks built between 1960 and 1990.

The school originated in the 1890s as a private fee-paying establishment in Doagh before relocating to Ballyclare in 1904 under Catherine Aiken's management. A new school building was subsequently constructed on the current Rashee Road site due to population growth. Arthur Fowweather, appointed headmaster in 1923, was reported to be the youngest headmaster in the British Isles at that time. The school was officially named Ballyclare High School from 1934. An extension costing £8,000 opened in October 1938, designed by W.D.R. & R.T. Taggart. Following the Second World War, the 1947 Education Act prompted significant growth in grammar school attendance, and Ballyclare High School's pupil numbers reached 401 by October 1948. This accommodation pressure was partly addressed through prefabricated huts and mobile classrooms, which remained in use into the 1980s. Further extensions followed in 1966 with a new gymnasium and again in 1987 at a cost of £4 million.

Although the school retains most of its original exterior detailing and several original window examples, it is described as a robust rural building displaying architectural and material innovations of its period rather than exemplifying the finest examples of mid-twentieth-century school design.