Malvern Primary School, Forster Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT13 1HW

Malvern Primary School, formerly known as Hemsworth Square School and originally as Forster Street Public Elementary School, is a symmetrical red-brick modernist primary school built around 1932 to designs by Reginald Sharman Wilshere, constructed by contractors J Carson & Sons of Belfast. It stands on the south side of Forster Street in the Lower Shankill Estate in North Belfast, surrounded by 20th-century terraced housing and to the south of the Crumlin Road Court House. The building is enclosed by modern metal railings, with a playground to the west. Forster Street itself has in recent years been closed off, giving children a playground directly adjacent to the school.

The school is of significant architectural interest as a model of early 20th-century ideas in school planning and facilities, expressing design principles concerned with light, ventilation and circulation. It is also notable for its use of classical decorative elements, unusual in buildings of this type, and as a surviving example of the work of a prominent local architect at the forefront of school design reform in Belfast.

The building has a quadrangular plan with a central courtyard, slightly projecting end bays to the north, stairwell bays, and a two-storey red-brick flat-roof extension to the south. The roof is hipped with Roman tiles, rounded tiles to the ridges and hips, and a flat roof with parapet to the central bay. The flat-roof extension at the south has a felt roof and a red-brick chimney stack. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are carried on projecting timber eaves with square hoppers to the courtyard.

The walling is English garden wall-bonded red brick with a moulded eaves course and concrete dressings. A concrete string course runs at sill level at ground floor and at first-floor level on the central bay. The internal courtyard walls are finished in cement render.

Windows are varied in type: timber sash with horns appear in plain painted reveals with red-brick voussoirs, while others — including all stairwell windows — are set in cement-rendered moulded architraves with projecting sills and corniced canopies on scrolled corbel brackets. Large multi-paned timber casements to the east and west elevations are arranged in some places in groups of three within cement-rendered surrounds, all with moulded concrete apron panels between floors. All window openings to the two-storey extension have projecting concrete sills. To the internal courtyard, round-headed arched openings contain six-light timber casements with painted cement render apron panels.

The principal, north-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged with a flat-roof central bay flanked by end bays. The central bay is lower and features a narrow multi-paned stairwell window at its centre with a carved roundel above bearing a decorated shield. To the first floor are four square twelve-paned fixed timber windows, and to the ground floor two 12/12 sash windows. The two entrance doors at ground floor level are each approached by either two concrete steps or a concrete ramp, and are set within pedimented cement-rendered doorcases with moulded frames, plain entablatures and corniced pediments. The left entrance has wide replacement timber doors with a two-paned transom light over.

The east elevation has five sets of multi-paned windows arranged in groups of three, divided by brick piers. The far right bay has a 6/9 sash window in an architrave with a corniced canopy over three narrow 2/2 timber casements at ground floor. The stairwell window to the far left bay has a moulded apron panel.

The south elevation has a central projection from the stairwell bay, which is concealed, and is abutted by the two-storey flat-roof extension. The east elevation of the extension has three four-paned fixed timber windows to the first floor left and right; at ground floor there are four small openings, the inner ones boarded and the outer ones fitted with timber vents, plus a modern metal service door in a cement-rendered surround to the left. The west elevation of the extension has eight small timber-framed windows at first floor and four boarded window openings at ground floor, with a round-headed modern metal entrance door with a cement-rendered archivolt to the left.

The west elevation has a central bay seven windows wide at each floor, framed by shallow breakfronts rising above the eaves line. These breakfronts have cement-rendered eaves bands decorated with a swags-and-tails motif and a narrow window to each floor. The left and right bays each have windows arranged in groups of three, as on the east elevation, with a stairwell window to the far right bay.

Much of the original historic fabric and detailing survives, along with the original floor plan, which is a significant part of the character of the building.

Wilshere had arrived in Belfast from Essex in 1926 to take up the post of architect to the recently created Belfast Education Committee. According to architectural historian Paul Larmour, Wilshere was responsible for transforming school design in the city: between the wars he built a total of 26 schools in which air, light and sunshine were provided in abundance, and spaciousness and cheerfulness were the dominant characteristics. Larmour describes these as the first modern schools to be built anywhere in Ireland. Features now considered standard were innovations at the time, including a single classroom for each class, a large assembly hall and dedicated rooms for science, cookery and art. Great care was taken with lighting and ventilation, the latter achieved through cross-ventilation and open-air corridors.

Malvern Primary School was built on a long, narrow site that replaced rows of terraced housing. Its quadrangular form with the central courtyard was specifically designed to bring light and ventilation to the classrooms. Valuer's notes from the 1930s show a plan of the building with eleven classrooms arranged around the central yard, and the building could accommodate 578 pupils. It was valued at £500 in 1935 and is first shown on the seventh-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1938. When first built, roads ran around the building on three sides and the children used a public playground laid out opposite.

Wilshere believed strongly in the aesthetic quality of design and its transforming effect on pupils. The Irish Builder quoted him as saying that if the children of a district had no beauty in their daily surroundings, they needed beauty all the more in their schools.

The revolution in school design inaugurated by Wilshere must be understood in the context of the very poor condition of Belfast's schools at the time. A building and renovation programme had been set in motion by the Northern Ireland education reforms of the 1920s. Many of the old National Schools were no longer fit for purpose — some were found to be a direct menace to the health and physical development of children — and large numbers of new schools were required.

In 1983 Hemsworth Square Primary School was amalgamated with the nearby Riddel Memorial School to form Malvern Primary School, which continues to serve the local community.