St John’s School, Bay Road, Carnlough, Ballymena, Co Antrim

St John's School is a Victorian building of distinctive proportioned style, erected in 1872 as recorded on a stone shield plaque on its south elevation. It is a single-storey T-shaped building with hipped roofs surmounted by a bell turret. The main front elevation faces south, while twin entrances in the rear return face east and west respectively.

The south elevation is symmetrical, containing six regularly spaced windows. The roof is laid in Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with decorative iron finials to each end of the main ridge. Two gabled vents to the roof, slated with timber fronts featuring arched openings (though some timber louvres are missing), are symmetrically arranged with decorative ironwork finials to the apex of each gablet. A central lantern rises from the main ridge, square in plan, comprising four shaped timber posts with arched openings standing on a base with battered faces and carrying a steep pyramidal roof. The base and roof are slated in courses incorporating some fish-scale slates; a bell hangs within the belfry. Bracketed eaves support the roof, though guttering is now missing. The walls are lime-rendered and whitened limestone rubble with render missing below cill level to reveal original stonework; the base is painted black. Projecting red brick string courses run at cill and transom level (painted), with cills of red sandstone (also painted). A ventilation hole below one cill lies open with its grill missing. The windows are currently boarded up, comprising pairs of two-pane timber fixed lights surmounted by a common bottom-hung top vent which opens inward, set in raised segmental arched brick block dressings (painted).

The west end of the front block is one bay wide, containing a pair of coupled windows. The wall here is smooth cement rendered, lined and blocked, with string courses and dressings coated in smooth render and cills of red sandstone.

The rear of the front block on the west side of the return has roofing without vents, walling similar to the south front, and incorporates a projecting chimney breast extending through the roof as a red brick stack of battered profile up to its mid-point, with plain brick string courses and corbel courses at the top, retaining one original stub pot. One window as on the south front is present, with similar brick dressings and sandstone cill.

The west elevation of the rear return has a roof of lower ridge height than the front block, similarly slated and eaved but without guttering. One short chimney on the ridge is of red brick with plain string course and corbel courses, retaining two original stub pots. The walling is similar to the south front without string courses, containing two windows and one doorway in the corner with the front block. Window dressings are as on other elevations; the southern window has raised render to its reveals and a concrete cill, while its cill is of sandstone. The doorway is boarded up, set in raised segmental arched brick block dressings (painted).

The north end of the return has similar roofing and walling to the west side, with the addition of a rough projecting limestone rubble plinth. Two windows, as on the south front, have flush red brick block dressings painted over with raised smooth render to reveals and concrete cills. A cast iron downpipe is attached to the wall.

The east elevation of the rear return is similar to the west elevation except the doorway contains a rectangular timber sheeted door surmounted by a boarded up segmental arched fanlight with security grille attached. A ventilation hole below one cill lies open with its grill missing. The rear of the front block on the east side of the return is similar to the rear on the west side, except a ventilation hole lies open under the cill with its grill missing. The east end of the front block is similar to the west end.

The building stands within the built-up area of Carnlough, facing onto a lane off the main road but set back from it within its own grounds. The grounds are entirely surfaced in concrete. The front boundary is formed by a hedge on a low rubble stone plinth wall with an open pedestrian gateway at the centre and an open vehicular entrance to one end. Rendered boundary walls flank each side, with a graveyard to one side and a former church to the other; a rubble wall forms the rear boundary. Attached to the rear return are two link walls—one rendered, the other of concrete blockwork—connecting to a gabled single-storey outbuilding with dry dash rendered walls, corrugated iron roof, and damaged PVC guttering, with some openings boarded up and others containing sheeted timber doors. A modern rendered house stands adjacent to the church, reached by a gateway off the yard at the rear.

The building retains most of its original exterior and interior features and its original character, though it has fallen into disrepair. It was built in 1872 and has been used in the past as a community hall.