Lancaster Street School, Lancaster Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT15 1EZ

Lancaster Street School is a detached red brick Edwardian schoolhouse on the south side of Lancaster Street, Belfast, built in 1906–07 to designs by the architectural partnership of Blackwood and Jury, with a single-storey extension added in 1932 to designs by R.S. Wilshere. The building replaced an earlier Lancastrian School that had stood on the same site since 1811, and the site has been in continuous educational use for over 200 years. It is the only surviving building on Lancaster Street to predate the late 20th century Thomas Street redevelopment.

The 1907 building is primarily two storeys with a three-storey wing, designed in a free Arts and Crafts style with some Art Nouveau decoration. The 1932 addition is single storey. Roofs to the 1907 building are natural slate laid across three pitches with raised stone copings; the 1932 building has a half-hipped roof and clerestory windows over a flat roof set behind a parapet to the north. Brick chimneys punctuate the roofline. Guttering and rainwater downpipes are metal, with some original cast iron downpipes and hoppers surviving alongside later replacements.

Walls throughout are red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with brick pilasters. Openings, the moulded eaves, string courses and plinth are all cast concrete. Windows in the 1907 building are generally flat-lintelled, with Diocletian and Palladian windows at first floor level; all openings in this part of the building have concrete mullions. The windows to the two-storey section are original timber-framed casements with lead glazing, retaining some original glass. Windows to the single-storey 1932 addition are generally timber replacements. All doors are replacements.

The principal north elevation of the 1907 building presents three gables, with the northernmost projecting forward. The central gable contains the main entrance, which has a concrete surround featuring a segmentally arched canopy with Art Nouveau carving to the soffit and splayed reveals with a four-pane window to the left. The replacement door has a three-pane leaded overlight. Above the entrance at first floor level, centred on the gable, is a Palladian window. The east gable is framed by brick piers and features a large bipartite Diocletian window with an exaggerated keystone, with two tripartite windows centred on the ground floor below. The west gable has a central bipartite window at third floor level; its ground floor projects slightly with a continuous cornice and accommodates a four-section window and a recessed entrance door to the west. The 1908 section of the north elevation has four windows and a central door. The 1932 addition extends to the south, set slightly forward from the 1907 building.

The east side elevation is four bays wide, each bay featuring tripartite windows. Where the 1932 building abuts this elevation, a first-floor door gives access to a metal fire escape stair. The single-storey gable end of the 1932 addition is blank.

The rear south elevation of the 1907 building has three main gables, with the northernmost set well back and accompanied by a two-storey pitched wing and a single-storey flat-roofed extension in front. On the ground floor of the two main gables, multi-paned windows with rendered surrounds run the full width between the brick pilasters. The east gable has a Diocletian window matching that on the north elevation; the central gable has a tripartite window; the north gable has bipartite windows on each floor. The 1932 building on this elevation has two large multi-paned screen windows incorporating doors. The north side elevation has two bipartite windows at ground floor level and one at first floor.

The school sits slightly back from Lancaster Street, facing down Thomas Street into a residential area of new houses. The small rear yard backs onto commercial land. The front boundary is a new red brick wall with metal vehicular gates, replacing an original rubble stone wall and entrance arch that may have dated from the earlier Lancastrian School but was demolished before 1987.

The building was originally commissioned as a Ladies Industrial School by its trustees, educating young women in household skills including plain sewing, mending, darning, knitting, washing, ironing and housemaid's work. The Irish Builder recorded the total construction cost, including an adjoining matron's residence, as £3,000, with the completed school able to accommodate 115 pupils. The school was built on land leased from the Earl of Shaftesbury and was originally valued at £115. In 1908 the matron was a Ms. Margaret Roberts, who resided in the adjoining teacher's dwelling.

Blackwood and Jury was a partnership formed around 1901 by William Blackwood and Percy Morgan Jury, which continued to practise under that name until 1973, making Lancaster Street School one of their earlier commissions. The school suffered disruption during the civil disturbances of 1922, as recorded in a School Inspector's report; the junction of Lancaster Street and York Street had been a recurring site of riots dating back to the 1880s.

The school operated as a Ladies Industrial School until 1932, when it was converted into a Public Elementary School. The conversion was carried out by Reginald Sharman Wilshere (1888–1961), a Belfast-based English architect appointed as architect to the Belfast Corporation Education Committee in 1926, who went on to design 26 new schools for the Corporation before the Second World War. The Irish Builder recorded his belief that children who lacked beauty in their daily surroundings needed it all the more in their schools. As part of his conversion, the single-storey south-east extension was added. Following conversion, the rateable value of the building rose to £190. The school survived the Second World War bombing of Belfast's city centre and dock area, and by the 1950s its value had risen to £340, where it remained through the end of the second revaluation in 1972. Around 1960, the main school building was also recorded as being used as a Government Office, with the single-storey extension serving as a nursery school.

The first school on this site, the Lancastrian School of 1811, was built at a cost of £1,954 to provide education on the principles laid down by the Quaker Joseph Lancaster, and accommodated over 1,200 pupils. It was demolished around 1900 to make way for the present building. Lancaster Street itself was developed in the early 19th century, though no other buildings from that period survive on the street.

The building was listed in 1993. It is currently occupied by Bunscoil Mhic Reachtain, an Irish-language school, continuing a tradition of education on this site stretching back over two centuries.