Former Parish School, 144 Drumsurn Road, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 OPD

Former Parish School, 144 Drumsurn Road, Limavady

An early 19th-century two-storey rural school building with later teacher's residence and 20th-century extensions. The structure is soundly built of random rubble stonework with red brick trims and a natural slate roof. Though substantially altered and now recorded as derelict, it retains evidence of its original educational and domestic functions.

The building is five bays wide and comprises three distinct elements. The original school occupies the western three bays, a two-storey structure with a chimney at each gable and a small entrance porch of red brick at the west gable. This was extended eastward in the early 19th century by the addition of a teacher's dwelling with its own separate entrance, comprising a fourth bay of equal depth, followed by a fifth bay that is two bays deep at ground floor but only one bay deep at first floor. Both sections have been extended to the rear in the 20th century, with part of the school incorporated into the residence in the late 1930s.

The walls are primarily finished in smooth rendering except for the school porch, which is built of red brick. The boundary between the original school and the teacher's dwelling is marked by a straight joint, visible in the rough squared sandstone of the dwelling's entry bay. Windows throughout are timber casement type with four panes and sandstone cills; the dwelling entrance has been altered with the addition of a small window. Large Bangor blue slates, typical of those supplied by the Marquis of Waterford Estate, cover the roof. The west gable features a broad cement or concrete barge stone and centrally placed ground and first-floor windows, though no evidence of internal fireplaces survives despite the gable chimney.

The building stands some 20 metres back from Drumsurn Road, parallel to it. To the rear, the remains of school yard boundary walls survive, along with outside privies and a store. An adjacent stone-built, slated structure with gable access at each end, possibly a privy, stands at the north-east corner of what appears to have been the school teacher's garden or vegetable plot.

Historical records from the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 identify two schools on the site under different management: Ardmore male school under master Joseph Whyle, and a parish school for girls under mistress Jane Woods, both Protestant free and pay schools supported by charitable organisations and private subscription. A later memoir entry records that a school house adjacent to the church was erected in 1825 at an expense of 180 pounds, funded by the Lord Lieutenant (50 pounds), neighbouring farmers (1 pound 10 shillings), and the Reverend George Scott, incumbent, with one acre of land attached. The school was replaced by an adjacent new building (reference HB02/08/011) in the 1930s.