St Patrick's School, 193-195 Donegall Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 2FL

St Patrick's School, 193–195 Donegall Street, Belfast

This is a detached, symmetrical, multi-bay, two-storey brick former school built around 1830, L-shaped on plan and facing west on the east side of Donegall Street. It comprises a long north wing and a shorter south wing flanking a central gabled entrance bay. It stands adjacent to St Patrick's Church and the associated Parochial House and terrace to the north. Reputedly the earliest surviving Gothic Revival building in Belfast, it was also the first National School in the city. Although extensively damaged by fire around 1995, resulting in the loss of much original fabric internally, the plan form survives along with significant historic external detailing. The school is a good example of its type and represents the development of education in Belfast in association with the Catholic Church, as well as the ongoing development of the site from the early 19th century.

Historical Background

The foundation stone was laid on 24th July 1828 by Bishop Crolly, the school opening the following year. Classes ran from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon on weekdays and from ten until noon on Saturdays. The school accommodated 480 boys and 380 girls in summer, around 50 fewer of each in winter. The building originally comprised two rooms, each ninety feet long, thirty feet wide and eighteen feet high. Some pupils paid a penny per week, but most children were from the poorest class and received their education free of charge.

Teaching followed the Lancasterian method: large open schoolrooms supervised by a schoolmaster, with children seated on long forms ranked by ability. Wide aisles along the sides were used for supervised reading lessons, with more able pupils providing instruction to younger groups.

The school joined the National School system in 1832, the first in Belfast to do so, receiving books, requisites and a grant of £70 towards the wages of male and female teachers from the Board. In 1833 the Diocesan Seminary was built as the south wing of the present building, with boarders residing at the Vicinage on the Crumlin Road, which later became St Malachy's College.

The building is listed in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40 at £46 14s 4d, with a plan showing it occupying broadly the same form as today. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 values the national school house and yards at £75 and the adjoining Diocesan Seminary at £36.

From the 1840s the school offered evening classes to older children who worked during the day. By 1860 these classes ran between seven and nine at night, with each pupil paying two and a half pence per week. The children were employed during the day as artisans, clerks, butchers and millworkers. Evening classes for girls, mainly millworkers, began in the mid-1860s.

In 1866 four Christian Brothers arrived in Belfast, took over four classrooms in the Donegall Street school and renamed that section St Patrick's Christian Brothers School. The rooms to the south, the former Diocesan Seminary, became St Patrick's National School. No state aid was granted to the Christian Brothers school, unlike the National School; funds were raised instead through an annual charity sermon and house-to-house collections. An Infants' School was established on the site on 30th March 1885. By 1900 the Christian Brothers school was valued at £200 and the national schools at £160, suggesting improvements or additions had been made since the 1856–64 valuation.

No architect is recorded, though Paul Larmour has suggested the school may be the work of Thomas Duff, who was working in the Gothic style for ecclesiastical clients at this period and was broadly contemporary with the neighbouring St Patrick's Chapel (the present church is a replacement of that earlier building).

The national school closed by the mid-1960s, the Christian Brothers school surviving a few years longer. The building fell into disrepair during the 1970s and 1980s while in occasional use as a church hall. In 1995 it was badly damaged by a fire that spread to the neighbouring church. The Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust subsequently took over the building, securing funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Urban Development Grants and the Environment and Heritage Service. Renovations supervised by Consarc began in 1998. The northern wing had been extensively damaged in the fire, with the roof and first floor having collapsed, leaving only the cast-iron columns standing. The renovation was tailored to the new tenants: the Catholic Council for Maintained Schools and the Diocesan Resource Centre bookshop, which occupy the northern wing. The southern wing houses a restored classroom on the ground floor and a meeting room on the first floor. The linkage between the two wings was rebuilt behind the entrance façade in a contemporary style. Windows were restored using crown glass on the elevations facing Donegall Street and Donegall Lane, brick repairs were carried out using salvaged brick, and a match for the original Dungannon sandstone was found at Darney Quarry in the north-east of England. The scheme received a First Trust Better Ireland award for its integration of ceramic panels with a Celtic theme in the entryway. Architectural historian C. E. B. Brett described the school as "a very fine exercise in Georgian Tudor", giving "a sudden breath of Hampton Court" when glimpsed above the high walls that once surrounded it.

The curvilinear Queen Anne Revival gable above the clock on the front elevation is likely to be a later addition, as this style was not favoured in the late Georgian period. A cartouche attached to the gable has lost its inscription, which formerly read "Erected by the R Rev Bishop Crolly MDCCCXXXIII" (1833).

Exterior

The roofs are hipped natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, cast-iron guttering to a stone eaves course, and cast-iron downpipes. The walls are hand-made red brick laid in Flemish bond with a moulded sandstone ashlar plinth course.

Window and door openings are pointed, four-centred or square-headed, formed in gauged brick with sandstone sills and fitted with replacement multi-pane timber windows with timber tracery unless otherwise noted.

The symmetrical front elevation is eight windows wide with a central recessed entrance bay two windows wide, surmounted by a curvilinear gable. The gable has sandstone coping, a flush stone base where a former plaque once sat, and a sandstone frame to an iron clock face. At first-floor level the openings are pointed-headed with splayed sandstone sills, deep hood mouldings and multi-light timber windows with perpendicular tracery glazing bars; those to the entrance bay have figurative label stops. At ground-floor level the openings are four-centred arched, set in slightly recessed surrounds, and fitted with cusped timber-framed windows with cusped overlights. The decorative timber entrance doors have interlacing panels and metal studs, a cusped tripartite overlight, and open onto two granite steps.

The north side elevation is eight windows wide. At first-floor level the openings are square-headed with hood mouldings, a continuous sill course and bipartite 4/4 timber sash windows. At ground-floor level the openings are pointed-headed, set in shallow recesses, and fitted with tripartite timber sash windows with interlacing Y-tracery. The rear elevation to the north wing is abutted by a modern two-storey brick extension built around 1998. The south side elevation has four bays detailed in the same manner as the north side elevation.

The former space between the two wings is now filled with a brick screen rising above the eaves, built in a contrasting contemporary style and incorporating timber doors, ceramic panels and steel windows.

The rear elevation to the south wing is four windows wide, with 2/2 timber sash windows to the first floor and a single window and door opening to the ground floor. The south elevation to the south wing is four windows wide, with pointed-headed window openings to the first floor fitted with bipartite timber sash windows with Y-tracery heads, and four-centred arched openings to the ground floor fitted with bipartite single-pane timber sash windows with Y-tracery heads.

Setting

The school sits on the east side of Donegall Street on a slightly elevated site, immediately adjacent to the south elevation of St Patrick's Church. It is street-fronted, with a bitmac-finished rear parking area enclosed by replacement steel railings.