Barrack Street Boy's Primary School, Barrack Street, Strabane, County Tyrone, BT82 8HE

Barrack Street Boy's Primary School, Strabane

A small single-storey stone-built school house completed in 1885, originally named Barrack Street Strabane Male National School. The building is set on the north-east side of Barrack Street and now serves as the school canteen, linked to a much larger modern style extension built in 1956. Though somewhat diminished by later additions, it remains an attractive structure with group value alongside the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception and Parochial house.

The building is constructed in snecked rubble with ashlar sandstone dressings, quoins, a bevelled base course, eaves course, parapets, and a slated roof. It has a gabled form with a relatively large return to the rear and a porch projection to the front.

The front elevation faces south-west and is symmetrical. At its centre stands a gabled porch-like projection with a semicircular-headed window-like recess to its south-east face, lined in unpainted cement render. The entrance likely originally occupied this face. A sandstone panel on the gable reads "Barrack Street Strabane Male National School 1885". The porch has a moulded eaves course continuing to the base of the gable, with similar moulding along the gable verge. The north-west and south-east faces of the porch each have a relatively small segmental-headed window, with similar windows to either side on the main building section. The main north-west gable features a large Venetian window with a moulded archivolt, either side linking to heavier moulding extending from the gable kneelers. A small slit ventilation opening sits close to the gable apex. The south-east gable was originally identical but is now partially obscured by a lower single-storey modern entrance wing added during the 1956 extension; the upper third of the original window remains visible above the extension's roofline.

To the centre of the rear elevation stands the large return, with two windows on its north-west face and two on its south-east face, broader than those to the front. The north-east-facing gable of the return has been abutted by a lower modern extension added after 1983. Above this extension, the exposed section of gable is roughcast rendered with a large ventilation opening and grill. To the right of the return, on the rear façade of the main building section, is a doorway with recent flat-panel double doors. All windows have recent timber replacement frames. Aluminium rainwater goods are present throughout.

To the front of the building is a small garden, with the school grounds enclosed from the roadside by a low rubble wall with wrought-iron railings.

The school was constructed in 1885 at a cost of £845, replacing an earlier National School (Strabane No. 1 National School) built in Townsend Street in 1855. It opened in May 1886 with an initial roll of 99 boys, increasing to 156 the following year. By the 1950s pupil numbers had nearly doubled from 1880s levels. A large new extension was added to the rear, completed in 1956 at a cost of £30,000 and officially opened by Dr Farren, Roman Catholic Bishop of Derry, on 25th September that year. The original school building was converted to a canteen, either in conjunction with the extension's opening or at some later period (timing uncertain). A small further extension was added to the return sometime after 1983.