Former National School, St John's Roman Catholic Church, Castle Hill, Gilford, Co Down

Former National School, St John's Roman Catholic Church, Castle Hill, Gilford

This detached single-storey stone and brick schoolhouse was built in 1879 and stands within the grounds of St John's Roman Catholic Church, to the west of Castle Hill. It represents a well-preserved example of a once-common type of Victorian parish school, exhibiting a variety of traditional masonry techniques and retaining much of its original external appearance.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing north, with a lean-to extension added to the rear around 1990. It has a pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles and uPVC guttering supported on timber fascia with uPVC downpipes. The walls are constructed of generally coursed rough-hewn and snecked greystone with rough-hewn squared granite quoins. Window openings feature gauged heads, slightly cambered, with brick jambs and stone sills. The original windows are horizontally-glazed bipartite 2/2 timber sashes with timber mullions.

The north-facing front elevation is seven openings wide. It is dominated by an off-centre gable-fronted entrance porch with decorative timber bargeboard and finial. A slate wall plaque set into the gable is inscribed 'Castle Hill / National School / AD. / 1879'. The porch contains a bipartite timber sash window in the gable and a square-headed door opening to the left cheek with a redbrick surround and replacement sheeted hardwood door with overlight, opening onto two concrete steps. The east gable is blank. The rear elevation is abutted at its east end by the flat-roofed cement-rendered lean-to extension. Two original bipartite timber sash windows are retained at the west end only. The west gable is blank except for redbrick at the centre, which serves a former chimneystack.

The school opened on 2 January 1879 at a cost of £300, built by local subscription and owned by the church. Its establishment was championed by the curate, Father Henry Devlin (1868–1883), who faced considerable local opposition, as Gilford already had three schools—a Church of Ireland school, a Presbyterian school, and a Mill School. The building was fitted with a large amount of solid wood when it opened, with 13 desk-forms and 8 separate forms, each 9 feet long. Children in mill towns such as Gilford typically attended school for half-days, working in the mills for the remainder of each day or on alternate days. The first teacher was Miss Mary Maguire, aged only 18, daughter of a local hotel proprietor. She married the School Monitor, William Boyle, in 1884, and once their first child was born in 1885, Boyle became headmaster whilst his wife continued teaching. The Boyles retired in 1920 and became outstanding community figures; Mr Boyle served as a Justice of the Peace and member of the British Legion.

The school was not recorded in valuation records until the 1930s, when it was valued at £11 and noted as containing three classrooms with accommodation for 117 pupils. A valuer's plan from 1934 appears to show a second porch towards the western end, where a doorway exists today. During the Second World War, the building was temporarily taken over by the military in 1943 for an unrecorded purpose. A new school opened in 1957, and the present building was subsequently used as a Parochial Hall. It was renovated in 1983 at a cost of £6,000. The building has since housed a boxing club, and has formerly been used as a nursery and for social events.

The setting is located on the west side of Castle Hill within the grounds of St John's Roman Catholic Church. The site is enclosed by rubblestone walls with stacked coping and a decorative cast-iron pedestrian gate to the east. A bitumac parking area lies to the front. The school shares and enhances the setting of the church, and is highly visible and of much local interest.