Blythefield Primary School, Blythe Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT12 5HX

Blythefield Primary School is a Grade B+ listed Art Deco two-storey primary school, built in 1929 to designs by Education Architect Reginald Sharman Wilshere, and completed between 1929 and 1932. It stands at the end of Blythe Street off Sandy Row in south Belfast, within a setting of two-storey residential terraces, with the Belfast to Dublin railway line running parallel to the west, Linfield industrial estate and Weavers Court to the north, and a car park to the front with a playground to the west bounded by a palisade fence.

The building is one of 26 schools Wilshere designed in Belfast between the wars — and ultimately one of 39 he produced over his career — representing a decisive break from the outdated National School tradition in favour of schools characterised by air, light, sunshine, spaciousness and cheerfulness. Wilshere arrived in Belfast from Essex in 1926 to take up his post as architect to the recently created Belfast Education Committee, at a time of urgent need: a 1924 survey of elementary schools had found only 6 satisfactory out of 194, with around forty described as a direct menace to children's health. The school was announced in the Irish Builder in February 1929, which noted that the new schools "have been planned on modern lines; the schools built in other parts of Ireland are still antiquated in design." The tender of J & RW Taggart for £25,800 was accepted in August 1929. The building first appears on the 1931 edition of the Ordnance Survey, captioned simply "School."

The school was built on a site to the rear of Linfield Weaving Factory, established in 1833. Together with the Blackstaff Spinning and Weaving Factory further to the north, these mills had provided employment and driven the development of working-class terraced housing in the area during the second half of the 19th century. Valuation records from 1932 record the building as a school, yard and grounds, then known as Blythe Street Public Elementary School, occupied by the Belfast Regional Education Committee and leased from the Ulster Spinning Company Ltd, with the school buildings valued at £511. The First General Revaluation raised this to £780, describing the building as a "good, modern school…built of a good quality brick and slate," with central heating and accommodation for 1,008 pupils, with 829 on the roll in 1934. By 1954 the school had been renamed "Linfield" and redesignated an intermediate (secondary) school for 850 pupils, with the valuation raised again to £1,070 in 1955. In the 1970s it was redesignated a primary school and renamed Blythefield Primary School, continuing to provide primary education to the Sandy Row area.

Features now considered standard were innovations at the time: a single classroom for each class, a large assembly hall, and dedicated rooms for science, cookery and art. Great care was given to ventilation — achieved through cross-ventilation and open-air corridors — and to lighting arrangements. Wilshere himself believed in the transforming power of architectural aesthetics on the children in his schools; the Irish Builder recorded his view that "if the children of a district have no beauty in their daily surroundings, they need beauty all the more in their schools." In 1930 he was awarded the first RIBA Ulster Architecture Medal for his school at Strandtown. During the Second World War he supervised repair of bomb-damaged schools and housing, before overseeing a second wave of school building following the 1947 Education Act.

The school shares group value with Nettlefield, Avoniel and McQuiston schools, all listed Belfast schools to Wilshere's designs.

The building is arranged as a quadrangle of four two-storey blocks, with the outer re-entrant angles infilled by lower, subservient single-storey link blocks, and a central single-storey administration block. The roof is flat with parapets. Rainwater goods are cast iron with decorative hopper-heads. There is a brick chimney. The walls are red brick laid in English garden wall bond, with a soldier course to the top of the parapet surmounted by a masonry coping stone, a moulded plinth course, and moulded surrounds. Windows are multi-paned, single-glazed timber casements with replacement brass ironmongery.

The principal elevation faces south and is symmetrically arranged in five bays, each with a uniform arrangement of triplet double-height windows in a double-height recess with a central spandrel panel of simple geometric mouldings and painted rendered surrounds. There is a continuous ground-floor cill course. The parapet over the central three bays is slightly raised. The front entrance is centrally placed, with a projected apron with inverted curved edges supported on plain brackets, a timber double-leaf door with triplet raised and fielded panels, a geometric grille overlight, and step-moulded surrounds with a pronounced key block. Flag pole brackets above first-floor level are fixed onto geometric brickwork on the parapet. The façade is flanked by narrow single-window bays, each containing a double-leaf secondary entrance with a projected apron with geometric detailing and plain brackets over, and a single first-floor window.

The left (west-facing) elevation features a projecting double-height seven-bay façade with plain brick pilasters and geometric moulded capitals, encompassed by painted rendered and geometric brickwork surrounds. Each bay has a double-leaf timber door with multi-paned glazing and geometric surrounds, with tripartite vertical windows (now infilled) recessed at high level. The central portion of the parapet is slightly raised, and below it reads "CITY OF BELFAST" in large individually fixed brass letters, with a cast-iron moulding of the Belfast coat of arms. Either side of the projecting façade is a narrow bay with a single double-height window. Two-storey chamfered blocks are located at the re-entrant of the west elevation and the front and south elevations, with varying quadripartite, bipartite and single windows. A single-storey flat-roof block containing toilets and the rear entrance projects south-westerly from the left-hand side, with a bipartite first-floor window over. The view of the rear elevation is completely obscured by the close proximity of an adjacent shed.

The right (east-facing) elevation comprises three bays matching the principal elevation. A single-storey additional hall projects eastwards to the right, with a fully glazed south elevation in red brick laid in stretcher bond. To the left is a single narrow two-storey bay with a double-height window, abutted by a single-storey block at the re-entrant of the east and front elevations, with quadripartite windows to both the east and south faces.

Within the quadrangle, the internal elevation of the north block has various double-height fenestration arrangements. The west block has been raised by a storey and features a double-height canted bay with replacement steel-framed glazed doors at ground-floor level. The south block bays have sept-partite first-floor windows with replacement steel-framed windows and doors at ground-floor level. The east block matches the south block and is abutted at ground-floor right by a single-storey flat-roof extension with large square single-pane window openings. The single-storey flat-roof octagonal administration block is located in the centre of the quadrangle, connected to the main school by corridors adjoining the north and south blocks, with grouped windows to each façade and a central raised timber lantern.

The building is roofed in asphalt. Roofing material is asphalt, walling is red brick, windows are timber casement, and rainwater goods are cast iron. Internally, the layout has remained largely unaltered and much of the original fabric and detailing survives. The entrance gates have been replaced, although the original piers and walls are retained. Additions to the internal courtyard and the single-storey hall to the east are considered clear and of their time, and do not significantly detract from the overall character of the building.