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

Lisnamuck Primary School

A long single-storey gable-ended schoolhouse built in 1844, extended to its present length and fitted with porches in 1895. The school closed around 1981 and subsequently served as a community hall before becoming disused.

The building is rectangular in plan with entrance porches at both ends providing separate access to the 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 featuring a corbelled cap and two plain fireclay pots. The porch roofs are lean-to, hipped on the southwest side due to the splayed wall. A shallow eaves course runs around the building. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

Walls are roughcast with the base of each wall painted in a contrasting colour as a plinth. Window frames to the classrooms are timber with 6/9 Georgian-like panes, with the upper sashes opening in hopper fashion. Window frames to the gables are fixed lights—single light on the east side and two light on the western side. Doors are timber sheeted with plain overlights to the porch doors.

The main façade faces northwest and is symmetrical. At the centre is a small datestone inscribed "Lisnamuck Public Elementary School, 1895". To either side are three evenly spaced flat-headed window openings. The northeast gable has a lean-to porch at its centre with a small window opening in the end wall; the main gable is blank except for a small blind opening in the apex. The southwest gable similarly has a lean-to porch at centre with a small window opening in the end wall, a doorway in front of the porch, and a small blind opening in the main gable apex. The southeast rear elevation has three evenly spaced window openings either side of a dividing yard wall, which runs into the front of the toilet block.

The yard to the rear is divided by a low wall, presumably originally intended to segregate boys and girls. Along the southeast site boundary stands a much later linear free-standing toilet block constructed of concrete blocks with a lean-to roof and a high central section containing a water cistern. The roof is sheeted with corrugated iron. Two windows in the south façade have Crittall-style steel frames, and there is a single steel-framed window on the southern side. Door and window openings are flat-headed. A screen wall shields both the girls and boys entrances. The block comprises five cells: two for boys and two for girls, with an externally accessed WC presumably for teachers at the centre. The girls side has a lobby and a WC cubicle; the boys side has a lobby containing a wide urinal and a WC cubicle.

The school occupies a rural location on the southern side of Fivemile Straight just west of the crossroads with Lisnamuck Road, 4km west of Maghera. It is set back behind a low stone wall with rough stone coping. Two pedestrian gateways with square piers featuring shallow pyramidal caps and wrought-iron gates provide access. The site falls gently from northeast to southwest.