Ballynafeigh National School Florenceville Drive, Belfast, BT7 3GY

Ballynafeigh National School is a single-storey red brick building with reconstituted stone dressings, built in 1905 and located off Ormeau Road between Florenceville Drive and Whitehall Parade, approximately 3 kilometres from the centre of Belfast. Designed by architect James John Phillips & Son, the school was built to serve 350 children and now functions as a hall for the adjoining Ballynafeigh Methodist Church.

The building is roughly T-shaped on plan, with a roof of natural Bangor blue slate with exposed rafter ends. The south elevation features a projecting gabled former classroom with three tall windows facing the road, each with segmental brick lintels and a keystone above a rectangular reconstituted stone plaque reading "BALLYNAFEIGH NATIONAL SCHOOL". To the right stands the main hall with two segmental-headed windows and a double-leaf fire escape door between shallow brick buttresses. A flat-roofed section connects the former school to the church. To the left of the classroom is a flat-roofed section containing an original door opening with decorative lintol, partially blocked and infilled with a smaller uPVC window. An original wall encloses a small yard to the left, with a two-storey modern extension featuring a double-pitched slated roof beyond. Multiple memorial name stones have been inserted into the exterior wall along this elevation, recording contributors to the school's construction: Mrs H Whitehead, in memory of Mr Henry Whitehead; Mrs John Connolly; Mrs JB Skelly; Mrs RB Brandon; Mrs AC Marshall; and Mrs TF Shillington. A tall brick wall, partially rebuilt with concrete blocks and capped with terracotta coping, originally bounded a playground. To the right stands a similar dwarf wall with original painted wrought iron railings and a pedestrian gate.

The east elevation, now attached by a new rendered link to the Methodist church, retains its original composition of a taller flat-roofed middle section containing the stage, with lower projecting blocks on either side. The west elevation is largely concealed by a two-storey extension in similar materials but with stained hardwood windows.

The north elevation facing Florenceville Drive is similarly laid out to the south. On the left, a single-storey projecting bay contains original painted steel windows and the main entrance to the hall, situated beneath a projecting flat-roofed hood with four tiled steps. The entrance door has painted double doors with lower solid panels and upper glazed panels. The projecting classroom section here is more ornately detailed, with semi-circular-headed reconstituted stone kneelers, two string courses above the windows, and a semi-circular apex over an oval oculus. The extension overlaps and projects beyond this original classroom, featuring a tall projecting triangular window to the first floor and two segmental-headed windows on the ground floor. Approximately half of the boundary walling and railings have been replaced in modern materials but in a style similar to the original. This elevation also bears a collection of name stones. Foundation stones record that the foundation was laid by the Rt Hon Sir Daniel Dixon, Bart MP DL, Lord Mayor of Belfast, on 28th October 1905, along with names including Mrs Edward Bennett, Mrs JGW Reid, Mrs S Herald, Mrs ST Mercier, and Henderson. Three additional memorial stones commemorate alterations in 1951: the memorial hall foundation stone laid by Rev RH Gallagher BA on 9th June 1951, with TH Menary Esq and Mrs GH Stevenson also recorded.

Windows throughout are largely original single-glazed painted timber of hopper type with deep painted sills, though rainwater goods comprise a mixture of cast iron and uPVC.

The site was vacant around 1900 according to the third edition Ordnance Survey map and first appears on the fourth edition map in 1907. The school was built to the rear of Ballynafeigh Methodist Church of 1897. James John Phillips was the architect of choice to the Methodist Church in the north of Ireland, designing approximately seventeen Methodist churches, most of those in Belfast having accompanying schools. The site is relatively tight with concrete paths around the former school and small areas of grass at each side of the hall. Adjacent buildings in both streets are largely two-storey early twentieth-century houses.

A memorial hall extension was added to the south-west in the 1950s, with its foundation stone laid on 9th June 1951 by Rev R.H. Gallagher. The interior was modernised at this time. The extension is more intrusive on the north elevation, where it overlaps and projects beyond the original classroom section.