St Patrick’s Primary School, Racecourse Road, Pennyburn, Londonderry, BT48 7RA

St Patrick's Primary School is a primary school of the early 1950s comprising four blocks of two and single storey construction, linked by glazed corridors. The school originally housed three separate institutions—infants, boys and girls schools—sharing an assembly hall, though it operated as a unified modular construction project with flat roofs throughout.

The Infants block contains both two-storey and single-storey elements. The two-storey part accommodates four classrooms on the ground floor and two at first floor level, with a roof terrace and pergola connecting them. Single-storey ancillary accommodation occupies the rear, served by a long spine corridor.

The external walls are faced with precast pebble-washed slabs, interlocking and measuring approximately 1200 by 450 millimetres, fixed without bond. The pebbles, approximately 25 to 40 millimetres in size and rounded, are set in white mortar. These panels are used throughout the school except on the gable walls, which are faced with iron-stained schist stonework (Claudy stone) built in random fashion and deliberately echoing the stonework of the Swiss Pavilion in Paris designed by Le Corbusier in 1924-5.

Windows are steel-framed and painted, featuring lower opening casements and top-hung vents. Classroom windows are grouped as continuous glazing, surrounded on head, sides and cills with projecting concrete such that the window plane aligns with the finished wall surface. Windows are modular at approximately 1200-millimetre centres, each module containing five panes and single-glazed, although double glazing had been intended at the planning stage. Ground floor classrooms have large windows on the south-east side with high-level strip windows opposite for cross ventilation. The two first-floor classrooms have large windows on both sides. Doors and screens are also in metal.

The roof terrace is finished with paving slabs on asphalt; the remaining flat roofs are finished with three-ply mineral felt and overhang approximately 500 millimetres. The stone gables, termed "book ends," extend beyond the plane of the long walls to allow the flat roof overhangs to abut against them, creating a strong sense of modelling. The centre ground floor classrooms likewise break forward to enhance the visual modelling. Copings to the parapet wall of the roof terrace are precast concrete, and the lightweight pergola is of aluminium. Where individual windows occur, particularly to ancillary accommodation, concrete surrounds are also provided. Circular dome roof lights admit daylight to the spine corridor, which has doors at either end and at the two staircases to provide easy access to outdoors and paved external teaching areas.

A flat-roofed glazed connecting corridor runs from the ancillary accommodation to the girls school block. The corridor features concrete flat roofs weatherproofed with three-ply mineral felt, fully glazed on each side with metal windows resting on upstand kerbs. Where changes of level occur, the connecting corridors are stepped. The roofs are supported on independent slim steel columns, which in some cases are incorporated into the windows.

The girls and boys blocks are practically identical except in internal toilet arrangements. Their layouts differ slightly from the infants block. The ancillary accommodation is separated from the classrooms by a series of small rectangular concrete-paved courts with short dividing corridors, allowing ground floor classrooms to have full glazing on both sides. The staircases are contained within the classroom block, with the corridor incorporated in the single-storey ancillary part. The external expression otherwise mirrors the infants block. All blocks are staggered in the site layout to prevent overlooking between them. The courts contain planted beds.

The Assembly Hall block employs the same external expression but omits the gable stone walls. The hall itself is of greater height and faced entirely with precast concrete slabs. The corridor runs along the south-east side, with the principal glazing facing north-west and overlooking an outdoor play area. High-level glazing is provided on the south-east. The roof is flat with similar overhang. This block contains a large entrance hall and is linked to the other blocks and school meals accommodation by glazed corridors. Beneath the hall at the stage end is the boiler house, accessed by external steps at the north-west corner.

The school occupies a long rectangular site with a small portion at the south-east corner providing access to Collon Lane. All blocks face south-east. The staggered layout creates a sequence of outdoor spaces particularly on the south-east elevation and resolves the different levels across the sloping site, which descends from north-west to south-east. The main entrance is from Collon Lane at its junction with Racecourse Road, with a service access further along the lane. The site is surrounded by mixed housing with pedestrian access to these properties.

The staggered layout and modular construction represent notable early post-war design principles. However, the school's accommodation has been substantially augmented by extensive temporary classrooms due to neighbourhood expansion in the Shantallow area, which has overcrowded the site and diminished the outdoor facilities and visual qualities of the original design.