The Steele Hall, Portora Royal School, Willoughby Place, Enniskillen, BT74 7HA

The Steele Hall is a mid-Victorian assembly hall with classroom accommodation, built c.1859-1865 and designed by John McCurdy of Dublin. It stands to the south-west of the main Portora Royal School building, on a steep hillside to the north-west of Enniskillen, and is listed at Grade B1 for its rare and innovatory roof structure, group value with the main school, Munster House and the entrance gate screen, and its significance in the school's strong tradition of amateur drama.

The building is externally severely plain. It is nine bays long with a pitched slated roof, sand and cement rendered walls, and very large sliding sash painted timber windows set in segmental-arched openings. The south-east façade, visible from the school driveway, is plain except for two smaller asymmetrically placed windows at classroom level and a projecting cylindrical ventilating inlet at the roof apex. A fire escape stair was added in the 1990s. The south-west elevation features four large buttresses—one installed in the early 1990s, though it is unclear whether the others are original or were added later to counteract outward wall movement from roof spread. This façade displays the largest array of windows, with coupled pairs on the upper floor and an odd single window to the north-west of a plastered brick chimney carrying a bolted metal flue. On the ground floor, windows align with those above except for an extra window between the coupled pairs. The gymnasium and school boiler house abut this elevation at its north-western end. The north-west façade has a metal fire escape and another cylindrical ventilator in the apex, with a small 1930s building built against it. The north-east façade, facing the courtyard, has paired large windows on the upper floor but no odd window to match the south-west elevation; the approach lobby abuts the building here, and ground-floor windows and doors are haphazardly placed, with blocked openings visible on close inspection of the plasterwork.

The building's greatest distinction lies in its roof structural system. The interior features a wooden roof supported on arched braces—a rare and innovatory design described as possibly a true wagon roof employing early vertically laminated timber construction. This structural system is complemented by an attractive series of school honour boards with hand-painted names. A recent remodelling by Robert McKinstry included the insertion of a gallery while retaining the natural wood appearance of the roof structure.

The floor level of the classrooms sits at natural ground level because the hillside falls steeply away from the main school building, while the assembly hall floor is positioned a few steps above the terrace level of the main block. The War Memorial Lobby and stairs to the Cloister form part of the listed extent.

The Steele Hall may initially have served as a schoolroom before conversion to assembly room and theatre use. Oscar Wilde attended Portora from 1864 to 1871 and would have witnessed the hall's construction. Samuel Beckett was at the school from 1920 to 1923, and it is likely he received his formative experiences of drama in this building, given Portora's strong tradition of amateur theatrical production. The hall is named after a former headmaster and holds considerable local cultural and educational significance within the Portora Royal School complex.