Old Technical School, Downshire Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 3JY

Old Technical School, Downshire Road, Banbridge

This former technical school and library is a two-storey, three-bay Edwardian building in red brick with decorative half-timbered gables, built around 1900 to designs by architect Henry W. E. Hobart and extended around 1910. It sits on the north side of Downshire Road, close to its junction with Bridge Street, with the River Bann immediately to the north. The building is currently in use as offices.

Architectural Description

The building has a rectangular plan with a projecting entrance porch to the south, single-storey lean-to extensions to the north and west, and a two-storey annexe added around 1910 to the east. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with decorative terracotta ridge crestings and finials, a red-brick chimney stack, and decorative half-timbered gables. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on exposed rafter tails. The walls are laid in Flemish-bonded red brick with a decorative string course at first-floor level. Windows throughout are tripartite timber-framed casements with leaded and stained glass panels to their upper sections.

The principal south-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged, with three evenly spaced windows at first-floor level. At ground-floor centre, a projecting porch is surmounted by a corniced balustrade with carved urns and terracotta panels. To the left and right cheeks of the porch are timber windows with Y-tracery and coloured glass panels. The Tudor-arched entrance is flanked by brick pilasters with terracotta capitals. The original half-panelled timber door has stained glass panels, is flanked by sidelights, and is surmounted by a transom light; it is reached through cast-iron gates.

The west elevation has a timber casement window at ground-floor level on the left. The north elevation has a full-height extension at its centre, with a modern single-storey lean-to extension at basement level to the north and west. The east elevation of the main wing has irregularly arranged fenestration and a four-panelled timber door with transom light to the ground-floor left.

The two-storey annexe to the east abuts the main building and is connected to it by a double-height stair bay. The annexe's south elevation is two windows wide at each floor; the stair bay at the left has a double-leaf modern timber door surmounted by a transom light and hood mould, with a paired timber casement window on the exposed west section. The east elevation of the annexe has two half-timbered gabled windows at first-floor level and two windows at ground-floor level.

The red brick and terracotta used on the façade came from the Lagan Vale Brickworks. The proportions and detailing are characteristic of the Edwardian style, of good quality and largely intact. Although the interior has been altered, much original fabric and detailing survive, including the original library.

Setting

The building is set back from the street behind an original red-brick boundary plinth wall topped by sandstone coping and decorative wrought-iron railings. The red-brick gate piers have chamfered shafts and corniced sandstone caps. The building sits opposite the former Northern Bank and beside the Methodist Church and the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, forming a noteworthy architectural group at this junction. Together these buildings illustrate the quality and character of Hobart's work in the town.

Historical Background

The building was originally constructed in 1902 as a combined Free Library and Technical School, largely funded by a grant from the Carnegie Trust. The initiative was driven by W. J. D. Walker of Glenbanna House, who was connected with the Congested Districts Board and urged prominent local figures to adopt the Technical Instruction Acts of 1899 and 1901. In March 1899 a committee of working men in the Banbridge area wrote to Andrew Carnegie requesting funding, noting that most working people left school at eleven or twelve to work in the mills and that a library was their only means of continuing their education. Carnegie promised a grant of £1,000 in June 1900, paid in April 1901. A further £1,400 was raised by local subscription, with many working people among the subscribers, their names picked out in red ink on the subscription list.

Carnegie's standard requirements were that the town adopt the Libraries Act and provide a free site. Banbridge Urban District Council donated the site, having purchased it from the Trustees of the nearby First Presbyterian Church for £165. The red brick and terracotta facing came from the Lagan Vale Brickworks. The accommodation originally comprised, on the ground floor, a technical classroom, reading room, ante-room, cloakroom and vestibule. On the first floor were the library and librarian's room. The original plan was T-shaped, with a double-height front section and a single-storey classroom to the rear.

The building opened in September 1902. Carnegie was invited to the opening ceremony but appears to have been displeased that the library had been combined with a school, and declined to contribute a further £1,600 that was requested of him. Almost immediately after opening, the three ground-floor rooms were let by the library committee to the technical instruction committee, with only the first floor used for library purposes. The building initially attracted very few pupils, and provision was made in the deeds to convert it into public baths should the school fail. This proved unnecessary: by 1925 the school had 417 evening pupils.

The library also housed the museum of the Literary Society in the downstairs hallway, which had been moved there from the courthouse. The collection was later broken up and distributed among local schools. Exhibits had included bog butter, specimens of shore life, pearl shell from the River Bann, small Egyptian figurines, a New Zealand war club, punch jugs donated by the Reading Society, alligator heads, and jars of snakes and reptiles.

The first secretary of the school was W. J. McCaghey, who later became Chief Inspector of Factories. He was succeeded by Brice Moore, appointed Principal and Secretary in 1902, who resigned in 1907 to become headmaster of Banbridge Academy. His successor was W. R. Johnston. In 1910 an annexe for technical education was built and presented by N. D. and T. S. Ferguson as a memorial to their parents; it was designed by William Wright Larmor, engineer to Banbridge Council and Assistant County Surveyor for County Down. In 1918 Johnston left for Coleraine Technical School and was succeeded by O. S. Spokes.

In 1915 two schools — Banbridge Academical Institution, based at Bannside Hall, and the Excelsior School, held in the Temperance Hall — combined to form Banbridge Academy. The new school was conducted in both Bannside Hall and the Technical School building. It was a fee-paying school with preparatory, pre-junior and post-junior departments, specialist teachers for mathematics, languages, classics and English, and a former Royal Irish Constabulary sergeant who drilled the pupils. A new Board of Governors was established under N. D. Ferguson. The school had three houses — Bann, Iveagh and Mourne — corresponding to pupils from the town, the Barony and the Kingdom respectively.

In April 1921 a flat-roofed workshop was added to the site (still present). In 1926 Banbridge Academy was transferred to Down Regional Education Committee, after which an extensive building scheme was launched that doubled the building in size, including raising the rear extension, so that both the Technical School and Banbridge Academy could be accommodated. The extended building was re-opened by Viscount Bangor, Chairman of the Down Regional Education Committee, in August 1928. The Technical School was by this time regarded as a great source of civic pride, considered one of the finest provincial institutions of its kind in Ulster.

By the time of the First General Revaluation of 1933–34 the building was valued in three separate portions as Banbridge Academy, the Technical School, and the Carnegie Library. At this point, ground-floor accommodation comprised an assembly room, two classrooms and two cloakrooms; the first floor had two classrooms, two kitchens for domestic science and an office adjoining the library; and the top floor contained a science laboratory and a further classroom. The building had hot water heating and electric lighting throughout. Banbridge Academy was almost at capacity with 137 of 140 places filled. The Academy paid £90 per year in rent and charged fees of between £10 and £16 per annum per pupil. The school buildings were used by the Academy between 9am and 4pm and by the Technical School after 4pm. The Technical School roll stood at 728 pupils.

Banbridge Academy joined the public education system in 1937–38. When Edenderry House came on the market in 1947 the Academy resolved to buy it, though the move was precipitated when the head of the Technical School, John McWhirter, began a day school in the Downshire Road building. The official opening of the Academy at its new premises took place on 24 September 1951. A new Technical School opened on the Castlewellan Road in 1963, considered a vast improvement on the old building on Downshire Road; that successor building is still in use as a Further Education College. The Carnegie Library, which had been the responsibility of the urban council, was taken over by the Southern Education and Library Board in 1973, but the Downshire Road accommodation was considered too cramped to cope with increased demand and lacked proper staff facilities. A new library opened in Scarva Street in 1979 at a cost of £140,000.

The building was listed in 1978 and subsequently became a pensioners' club. Early survey photographs show several ornamental ventilation lanterns along the roofline that have since been removed. Various repairs and renovations were carried out over the years, including replacement of windows, the roof, rainwater goods, the brick retaining wall and railings, much of this work supervised by architect M. H. Ferguson. In 2006 a complete refurbishment took place in which disability access was improved through the installation of lifts.