Currie Primary School, 111-113 Limestone Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 3AB

Currie Primary School, 111–113 Limestone Road, Belfast

This is a detached, symmetrical school building constructed in red brick with reconstituted stone dressings, built between 1927 and 1930 to designs by Reginald Sharman Wilshere. It sits on the north side of Limestone Road, set back slightly within its own paved grounds and enclosed by iron railings. The building is single-storey over a partial basement for much of its extent, rising to two storeys on the rear and side wings. It is quadrangular on plan, with classrooms arranged along the outer walls and accessed via corridors — originally open cloisters facing onto internal courtyards — and with a double-height Assembly Hall at the centre of the courtyard. The listing covers the school building itself together with the front entrance gate piers, entrance screen, gates, and railings.

Background and Historical Context

The school was originally known as Mountcollyer Public Elementary School and was one of a number of new, purpose-built public elementary schools constructed throughout Belfast following the establishment of the Belfast Education Committee under the 1923 Education Act — itself a product of the Partition of Ireland. These schools replaced the inadequate church and national schools that had previously dominated elementary education in the city. The Limestone Road itself had originally been laid out as a tramway route for transporting stone from the Cave Hill quarries to Belfast Docks at York Road. By the late 19th century, housing had developed along the road and Alexandra Park had been established nearby. The site on which the school was built had previously been used as a pottery factory. The growth of the local population and the poor condition of existing local schools made a new facility necessary.

Wilshere (1888–1961) was a Belfast-based English architect and planner, appointed as architect to the Belfast Education Committee in 1926. He went on to design 26 new schools in Belfast before the outbreak of the Second World War. His characteristic approach was to plan large schools around quadrangles with corridors open to the air. Paul Larmour described these as "the first modern schools to be built anywhere in Ireland," ranging in appearance "from the Neo-Georgian to the outright modernistic." Wilshere himself stated in 1932 that every one of his schools had "something distinctive about it architecturally, though all follow the same line in planning, and in that respect are in conformity with the best modern practice." The Irish Builder recorded that the school was constructed by J. & R. W. Taggart and opened in 1930. The fourth-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1931 shows the school in its current layout, suggesting few if any significant structural changes were made between its completion and that date.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the school was valued at £800. The only major subsequent addition was a three-storey L-shaped extension to the north-east of the original quadrangle, built around 1967, at which point the valuation rose to £3,200. The school had become known as Currie Primary School by at least the 1990s — named after a prominent local businessman, a Currie School having previously occupied premises in a former Congregational Church hall on Mervue Street. A new entrance lobby and lift were installed in 1999. The building was listed in 1994.

Exterior

The roof is hipped with terracotta pantiles and terracotta ridge tiles. A parapet wall runs along the front elevation only. The rainwater goods are original moulded cast-iron guttering to timber boxed eaves, with decorative cast-iron box hoppers and cast-iron downpipes. The brick walling throughout is laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing, and is dressed with moulded reconstituted stone frieze, projecting cornice, and plinth courses. Window openings are square-headed with moulded lintels and sills, and are generally fitted with original multi-pane timber casement windows arranged in groups within concrete surrounds, with steel security grilles.

South (Principal) Elevation

The south-facing front elevation has seven bays in total, with three equal-width bays arranged symmetrically on each side of a central, slightly advanced entrance bay. A continuous moulded frieze and cornice run below a raised brick parapet, with bitumen-dressed coping and a shallow brick pier separating each bay. The entrance bay projects forward by two shallow steps and its parapet rises to form a truncated gable with a reconstituted stone pedimented coping.

The entrance doorcase is a prominent classical composition: a square-headed door opening recessed to the plane of the façade, flanked by Doric pilasters with corresponding Doric columns supporting a stepped frieze. Above the stepped frieze is a semi-circular overlight formed in reconstituted stone voussoirs with a panelled soffit, containing a multi-pane timber thermal fanlight — a Diocletian window in form — with applied steel lettering reading 'CURRIE PRIMARY SCHOOL'. The replacement double-leaf timber panelled doors have a moulded architrave surmounted by a painted cartouche, and open onto a raised platform with replacement granite paving and six nosed granite steps, with an access ramp and stainless steel rails to the west. Slender ten-pane sidelights flank the entrance opening.

The windows to the front elevation are grouped in fives, framed in moulded reconstituted stone, each group consisting of a three-part window separated from a single window on each side by a mullion.

West Wing and North Elevation

The symmetrical west wing is connected to the front wing by a flat-roofed corner block. It has three principal bays, each containing three pairs of windows. At each end is a single window opening with a decorative architrave surmounted by a hood cornice embellished with a swag frieze. Three basement windows are exposed at the north end, each with paired six-pane timber casement windows.

The symmetrical north wing reads as a two-storey elevation, seven windows wide. At its west end is a stair tower with a timber glazed entrance screen at lower level and a further flat-roofed accretion clad in glazed bricks. The east end is abutted by a two-storey corridor connecting to a 1960s wing. The windows to this rear wing are arranged in groups of five, framed by full-height piers rising from the plinth course. At the centre of the elevation, between the upper and lower levels, is a moulded reconstituted stone panel with applied gilt digits '1930' and a central disc depicting an urn.

East Wing

The symmetrical east wing is also two storeys in height and has three principal bays, each with three pairs of windows with moulded surrounds framed by full-height brick pilasters. At either end is a slender recessed bay: the south end has a single brick balconette at first-floor level, while the north end has a square-plan brick chimney. A further flat-roofed corner block connects the east wing to the south wing.

Internal Courtyard and Assembly Hall

To the rear of the front wing, a two-storey block connects to the double-height Assembly Hall set within the internal courtyard. The internal elevations to all wings are generally two-storey flat-roofed corridor abutments with felt roofs. These were formerly open corridors but are now glazed with tripartite timber-framed windows and opaque coloured spandrel panels below. There is a canted two-storey bay within the block to the rear of the entrance, looking west into the internal courtyard. The rear wing has segmental-headed window openings at lower level with fixed-pane timber glazed screens.

The Assembly Hall is connected to the rear wing by a two-storey flat-roofed stair wing, with later flat-roofed extensions infilling the north-east and south-west angles. The Assembly Hall itself has a half-hipped roof, red brick walling laid in English garden wall bond, and round-headed window openings fitted with multi-pane bipartite timber casement windows and spoked fanlights.

Setting and Boundary Treatment

The school occupies an extensive bitmac-paved site that slopes down to the north. The south and west frontages are enclosed by the original steel railings on a low brick plinth wall, while the east boundary has a tall red brick wall. To the north, the site is enclosed by the later L-shaped three-storey wing of around 1960, built in grey brick and clad in sheet steel with a flat roof.

The original dwarf brick boundary wall with railings above remains intact along the west and south frontages. The entrance gate screen is a distinctive curved composition set on a curved brick plinth wall between twin brick pillars with moulded caps. It leads to the principal entrance via double-leaf iron gates with a decorative wrought-iron surround surmounted by an iron urn finial.

Despite later extensions and the enclosure of the original open corridor openings, the building retains its balance of well-lit spaces, its economical use of materials, and its simple repetitive rhythm. The retention of most of the original fabric both internally and externally, together with the survival of the gate screen, boundary walls, and classical entrance detailing, makes this a particularly complete and representative example of Wilshere's school architecture in Belfast.