Garvagh High School, 140 Main Street, Garvagh, Co. Londonderry, BT51 5AE

Garvagh High School

Garvagh High School is a predominantly single-storey modernist school built around 1953, designed by Noel Evans Campbell, County Education Architect, and constructed by Orlit (NI) Ltd, manufacturers of precast concrete. It stands to the south-west of Main Street, Garvagh, on a site previously occupied by Garvagh House, the 18th-century manor of the Canning family. The school was one of 50 intermediate schools under construction across Northern Ireland in the early 1950s following the Education Act of 1947, which introduced transfer at 11-plus to intermediate, grammar and technical schools and set out to modernise the ageing educational fabric of the province. Work began in October 1951 and the building was formally opened on 5th September 1953 by the then Minister of Education, H.C. Midgley, before a gathering of 500 guests, at a total cost of more than £107,000. It was only the second intermediate school to be built in the province and the first in a rural area, designed to accommodate 325 pupils drawn from a radius of seven or eight miles.

The school was highly regarded by contemporaries: the architect R.S. Wilshere judged it to exhibit "a very high standard of architectural skill, both in the design and in the use of colour and materials." Paul Larmour later noted that Campbell's use of a precast concrete frame with natural stone walls was "one of the themes in modern architecture in the British Isles at the time, with precedents in pre-war European work," and a feature employed elsewhere in Ulster by other progressive architects. The building was notable as the first school in Northern Ireland to be equipped with underfloor heating.

Architectural Overview

The plan is an asymmetrical dog-leg arrangement of five interlinking components, essentially a quadrangle of four rectangular blocks oriented around a central open-air courtyard, with similar but linear wings projecting to the south and north-east. The precast concrete frame allowed Campbell to employ large areas of glazing throughout, contributing to a sense of light and spaciousness characteristic of modern educational design of the period. Roofs are generally flat and of varying heights, with concealed rainwater goods to projecting concrete or timber boxed eaves and various downpipes in uPVC, cast iron and replacement metal. Walling is predominantly precast and painted concrete blocks over a smooth rendered, recessed base. Secondary walling, generally to corridors and south-eastern blocks, is either red or pale grey/yellow brick laid to stretcher bond. Reinforced concrete surrounds are raised around the majority of window and door openings, with similar continuous sills and lintels to windows. Windows are expansive metal-framed throughout the main school, with smaller three-paned windows to corridors and clerestory windows above; later insertions to interlinking corridors are timber in plain surrounds. Classrooms are generally lit by a fully glazed exterior wall with additional clerestory windows above. Doors are generally plain double-leaf timber and wire-glazed, usually with expansive plain glass and timber side-lights.

The Five Plan Components

(i) The south-west quadrangle comprises two perpendicular rows of classrooms lit by continuous windows to the outer perimeter, with clerestory windows over a flat-roofed advancing corridor that addresses the inner courtyard. The short-axis walls are generally blank in brick or precast concrete block, while those to the south and east of the quadrangle are of uncoursed, squared, rock-faced blackstone, curved to the east and extending above the roofline. The western portion of the quadrangle is similar in character to the main elevations but double-height, lit by five expansive windows on each side and abutted by single-storey flat-roofed corridors to north and south. The northern block is lighted by continuous three-light windows to the outer perimeter, with similar windows to the inner elevation, which comprises a number of recessed and advancing blocks and a flat-roofed projecting canopy supported on squared metal and concrete columns. The east corner of the quadrangle contains a glazed entrance bay with timber sheeting and a projecting canopy of reinforced concrete louvres over the main doors. A pair of parallel curved rock-faced blackstone walls to the south of the entrance advance eastward, with a number of linear blocks extending south, having extensive glazing (some uPVC) to both sides of the long axis. The north-east corner of the quadrangle is punctuated by a two-storey red brick block with decorative concrete panels, abutted by the north-west corridor.

(ii) The north-west corridor has its west side in precast concrete, punctuated by four advancing classroom blocks each breaking through the eaves and having expansive glazing and clerestory windows over, with recessed bays also having multiple smaller windows. The east side contains a skylit canopy on metal posts projecting over an elevation of yellow brick volumes, connected by full-height timber-framed windows or doors.

(iii) The central block, largely built around 1979, connects to the canteen block to the far north-east. The connecting volume has elevations of yellow brick with a timber fascia to the wall-heads, punctuated by full-height timber glazing in a similar style to the previous corridor, with continuous high-level windows and timber doors to the north elevation. The roof is flat and lit by skylights, except for a raised mono-pitched section to the centre, clad in blue-green slates with clerestory windows lining the vertical elevations. The canteen block, detailed in the same manner as the main school, is lighted by expansive continuous glazing and clerestory windows, with lower volumes to either side containing smaller windows.

(iv) The south-east block, the former primary school, is notably different in character, comprising three grey brick gabled blocks of varying size with pitched slate roofs, grey roll-moulded ridge tiles, and half-round cast-iron rainwater goods to overhanging timber-sheeted eaves. Generally expansive metal-framed glazing faces the outer perimeter, and the southernmost block is two storeys in height. These gabled blocks are interlinked by a single-storey flat-roofed L-plan corridor extending south and then east. Elevations to this linking corridor are in matching brick or roughcast, lighted by metal-framed windows of various types and having timber and glazed doors with a timber canopy extending over to form a porch. The north elevation comprises a series of advancing and recessed blocks with ramped access and brick screen-walls remaining. A mono-pitched modern extension abuts the south-east corner of the central block.

(v) An additional wing was constructed to the east around 2002; it is modern in nature and of little architectural interest.

Alterations and Development

The linking corridors were originally covered walkways with open sides but have since been fully enclosed. The main western classrooms were internally connected to the later double-height and two-storey accommodation to the east in previous decades. The south-eastern blocks, which were originally largely separate and differed in character from the main school by virtue of their pitched roofs and double-height or two-storey volumes, were fully incorporated through the construction of additional corridors and classrooms around 1979. These later-20th-century extensions and the enclosure of external walkways have somewhat diluted the original design intention, though the overall character remains. The classrooms were given an informal character through the provision of chalkboards on the long wall, the omission of division walls between classrooms and stores, and architect-designed built-in furniture of wood and plastic veneer. The tank tower next to the entrance was embellished with a county crest modelled and coloured by Campbell himself.

Historical Context

The school was built in the grounds of Garvagh House, the 18th-century manor and former home of the Canning family, founders of the town and agents for the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers. Garvagh House was retained within the design of the new school and provided a domestic flat for the teaching of housecraft, two general-purpose classrooms, the principal's and vice-principal's studies, staffrooms, offices, library and reading room, as well as residential accommodation for the principal and some members of the teaching staff. In 1956, girls at the school took part in an experimental scheme in home-craft training, spending one day and one night weekly in the domestic flat doing cooking and housework. Garvagh House was demolished around 1965 and replaced by a new primary school, though the late-19th-century stable block, which had been converted into the main boiler house, survives, as does the Canning family crest formerly situated over the portico of the house.

The school incorporated a school meals block serving 500 hot meals per day, metal and woodwork rooms with up-to-date equipment and an annexe for a forge, a covered play area, and art, needlework and science rooms. As a large proportion of boys were expected to work on the land, the school also had a laboratory for rural science, a large kitchen garden and a field of four to five acres for practical agricultural education. Lighting was designed to enhance the building's appearance after dark, as the building was intended for evening classes. Colour and lighting schemes were described as "a stimulus to the eye," with bright colours intended to be pleasing to children.

When the school-leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972, numbers in secondary education increased and the primary school was closed, with its buildings transferred to the intermediate school. The school has since been renamed Garvagh High School.

Setting

The school sits within expansive, mature grounds to the south-western side of Main Street, Garvagh. The eastern boundary is formed by rubblestone walls with metal railings, and access from the west side of Main Street is through a painted and rendered screen wall with a round arch in a keyed blackstone architrave, fitted with a pedestrian cast-iron gate. Two rectangular blackstone-capped piers to the right support large modern metal gates lettered "GARVAGH HIGH SCHOOL" in cut-away lettering. A main bitumen drive with mature planting on either side leads to a large car park to the south of the main building. Expansive grass and paved sports grounds lie to the south-west, the remaining perimeter bounded by modern metal railings. St Paul's Church and the Cenotaph in Garvagh Forest are located a short distance to the south of the site. The grounds include a caretaker's house to the south and greenhouse accommodation to the north-east, both of no special interest. Steps to primary porches are finished in fired clay tiles, with concrete steps elsewhere. The inner open-air courtyard has pebble paths with extensive planting.

Two historic outbuildings of squared blackstone construction with red brick dressings remain immediately to the north. The southern outbuilding has a pitched slated roof with a brick chimney, brick quoins and stepped brick architraves to door and window openings; it has a timber-sheeted half door with a 2/2 timber casement to each side, with projecting stone sills. The west gable is blank; the north elevation is rubblestone and blank; the east elevation is abutted by a concrete wall with a timber-sheeted double-leaf door inserted. The second outbuilding is of similar materials, double-height with larger openings and a replacement metal-sheeted roof; its west elevation is abutted by a mono-pitched single-storey extension in a similar style. A large-scale red brick chimney stands immediately to the east.