Lisnamuck Primary School, 89 Fivemile Straight, Maghera, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 7HT

Lisnamuck Primary School is a long single-storey gable-ended schoolhouse built in 1844, extended to its present length and given porches in 1895. Located in a rural setting on the southern side of the Fivemile Straight, 4 kilometres west of Maghera, it originally appeared on the Ordnance Survey map of 1854 as "Lisnamuck National Schools" — the plural reflecting separate provision for male and female pupils. By 1890 the girls' numbers had outgrown their smaller classroom, prompting the school authorities to seek grant aid from the Commissioners for National Schools. An unsigned plan of 1890 proposed adding returns with fashionable faux timbering to the gables, but a simpler scheme was adopted by 1894, involving lengthening at one end and adding porches. The work was completed in September 1895 with the aid of a grant of £272 from the Commissioners. The datestone on the front, inscribed "Lisnamuck Public Elementary School, 1895", records this extension rather than the original build date.

The building is rectangular in plan with entrance porches at both ends serving the separate girls' and boys' classrooms. The porches are rectangular with canted southern corners. The main roof is pitched and gabled, finished in natural slate, with a centrally placed ridge chimneystack bearing a corbelled cap and two plain fireclay pots. The porch roofs are lean-to, hipped on the southwest side due to the splayed wall. Walls are roughcast with painted plinth courses at the base. Window frames to the classrooms are timber with 6/9 Georgian-like panes; the upper sashes open in hopper fashion. Gable windows are fixed lights — single light to the east, two light to the west. Doors are timber sheeted with plain overlights to the porches. The front elevation faces northwest and is symmetrical, with three evenly spaced flat-headed window openings to either side of the central datestone. The northeast gable porch serves as entrance and cloaks space; the southwest porch now functions as an annex to the kitchen. Both gables have lean-to porches at their centres with small window openings in the end walls. The main gables contain small blind openings in their apexes. The southeast rear elevation has three evenly spaced window openings either side of a dividing yard wall, which presumably originally segregated boys and girls.

The rear yard contains a much later mid-20th-century linear toilet block with a lean-to roof incorporating a high central section containing a water cistern. Constructed of concrete blocks with a corrugated iron roof, it comprises five cells: two for boys and two for girls, with an externally accessed WC for teachers at the centre. The girls' side has a lobby and WC cubicle; the boys' side contains a wide urinal and WC cubicle with lobby access. Two windows in the south façade have Crittall-style steel frames. A screen wall shields both the girls' and boys' entrances. This toilet block replaced a smaller facility shown on the 1926 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map.

The school remains shown as open in 1976 but is believed to have closed around 1981. Subsequently it served as a community hall and meeting place for a local drama group. The building is now disused. Though formerly a well-preserved example of a small 19th-century schoolhouse, largely unaltered since its 1895 extension, the loss of much historic fabric has compromised its architectural interest. It remains significant as a representative example of an increasingly rare building type, reflecting important social history in relation to the growth of education in rural 19th-century Ireland.

The site is set back behind a low stone wall with rough stone coping. Two pedestrian gateways feature square piers with shallow pyramidal caps and wrought-iron gates. The ground falls gently from northeast to southwest. Rainwater goods are cast iron throughout.