Ballyphilip Boys’ Primary School, Ballyphilip Road, Tullyboard, Portaferry, BT22 1RB

Ballyphilip Boys' Primary School is a long, single-storey rubble-built schoolhouse in the gothic style, constructed in 1853 to designs by John O'Neil of Belfast. It stands at the junction of Ballyphilip Road and Cook Street, south-east of Portaferry.

The original front façade faces roughly south and is asymmetrical. Entry was formerly via the west face of an off-centre gabled projecting porch, though this doorway has been blocked. A small steel-framed window with chamfered sandstone dressings now occupies the former door opening. The porch gable features a central decorative three-light window with cavetto lintels and stone mullions; the central light is filled with slate inscribed with text rather than glazing. The porch's east face is blank. The porch roof is finished with stone parapet, decorative bellcote, and Bangor blue slates.

Four metal nine-pane windows are positioned to the left of the porch and three to the right, each with chamfered stone dressings, chamfered concrete lintels and cills. These windows originally contained three lights separated by stone mullions (two per window), but the mullions have been removed, lintels and cills replaced, and metal frames inserted. Buttresses run between the windows, with diagonal buttresses at all corners of the original building.

The east and west gables each have a single window matching those on the front façade. Small stone-dressed vent recesses appear at the apex of each gable, with fleur-de-lis finials to both gables. The building has a chamfered base. The original roof was steep and gabled, now largely missing, and featured Bangor blue slates with stone parapets and a widely spaced dentilled eaves course.

The rear elevation of the original schoolhouse contains two windows on each side, flanked by much later projecting flat-roofed corridors leading to a large extension. Both corridors and extension are constructed in composite blocks with rock-face finish and regularly arranged steel windows. The extension includes a part basement for a boiler.

The school was built in 1853 by Catholic parishioners of Portaferry. Originally serving both boys and girls, it remained coeducational until 1933, when a new separate girls' school was constructed nearby. The building was reroofed in 1951, and the large flat-roofed extension was added in 1952. A concrete schoolyard surrounds the entire complex.

The original windows have had their stone mullions removed and metal frames installed. There is insufficient original historic fabric remaining for the building to meet the statutory test for listing.