The Learning Tree, 69 Church Road, Castlereagh, BELFAST, County Antrim, BT6 9SA

The Learning Tree is a single-storey school with a rectangular plan, built around 1820 and located on the east side of Church Road in Castlereagh, adjacent to Castlereagh Presbyterian Church. The building originally comprised three bays with an adjoining porch and side bay.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged. A centrally positioned gable projects forward as an entrance bay, breaking through the eaves and flanked by single windows set into segmental arched niches. The porch has a plain front door with moulded cornice course overhead, flanked by two diminished windows, with small windows positioned either side of the porch cheeks. A blank plaque with moulded surround sits centrally on the gable. The left elevation is blank. The rear elevation is symmetrically arranged with four windows across. The right elevation is abutted by an asymmetrical single-storey gable-ended bay containing a central and left window, with a single door to the right of the right cheek and a blank left cheek.

Originally the building featured hipped natural slate roofing with clay hip and ridge tiles, clay finials, and yellow brick chimneys with projected moulded cornice courses and terracotta pots. The walls were finished in ruled-and-lined painted render with a shallow moulded corbel eaves course. Windows were 2/2 timber sliding sash with horizontal glazing bars and horns, set on masonry cills. By December 2012, the chimneys had been removed, the windows replaced with uPVC, and the roof re-slated.

Internally, much original joinery and plasterwork survives, though partially reorganised and modernised.

The school was erected in 1826 by subscription and with donations from the Marquis of Downshire. According to Ordnance Survey records, the master received payment from 60 pupils (38 boys and 32 girls, all Protestant) plus an annual stipend of 10 pounds from Newtown-breda Church. The school was connected with the Kildare Place Society, founded in 1811 to promote non-denominational education of the poor in Ireland. The Kildare schools later affiliated with the Church of Ireland following the establishment of the National School system in 1831. The building appears on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map as 'School House' and is documented in the 1833 Townland Valuation as a 'Kildare St Plain School, a grant from the Marquis of Downshire'. By Griffith's Valuation, it was recorded as the parochial schoolhouse valued at £3 10s (later £4). A teacher's house was added to the plot in 1879, raising the combined valuation to £7 10s. An extension to the north had been added by the time of Griffith's Valuation.

The original rural setting has been significantly compromised by the addition of temporary classrooms to the south and a large gravel car park to the front accessed directly from Church Road. A small playground occupies the rear, and a large dwelling bounds the site to the north.

The building is now occupied by The Learning Tree, providing pre-school and afterschool childcare. Whilst historically and socially important to the local area as an early country schoolhouse, it is not considered to be of sufficient architectural interest for listing.