St Colman’s College, Violet Hill, 46 Armagh Road, Newry, Co Down, BT35 6PP

St Colman's College is a Roman Catholic collegiate school complex on the Armagh Road at Violet Hill, Newry, developed in stages from the mid-19th century onwards on a site with origins going back to 1829. The complex is impressive for its scale and setting, though it is not considered to possess special historical or architectural qualities sufficient for listing. The older buildings are executed in a simple Ruskinian Lombardic Italianate Revival style, unified by pitched natural slate roofs with overhanging eaves and exposed rafter tails, cast iron rainwater goods, and load-bearing brick walls with stone dressings.

The main front range runs east to west. To the right of the main entrance is a three-storey wing terminating in a belvedere tower; to the left is a further section leading to a two-storey wing that ends at the chapel. A modern three-storey extension lies beyond the belvedere to the right but sits a full storey lower due to the fall of the ground. Behind the front range, to the north, is a quadrangle, two sides of which form part of the older building while the remaining two sides are modern.

The original school building — the section to the right of the present main entrance — was designed by the Belfast architect Timothy Hervey and built by Messrs McShane and Lavery. Work over the preceding two years was reported complete in the Irish Builder of 1 September 1879, when the school opened. At that time a three-storey house of 10 yards by 27 yards in plan, a three-storey tower of 5 yards by 6 yards, and a one-storey passage of 3 yards by 23 yards were recorded in the valuation revision book of 1878, which also notes that the contract for finishing the buildings was £2,800 and that some earlier buildings had been demolished with more to follow. The valuation rose from £40 to £86 that year. The original Georgian house still stood at that time, running back at right angles behind the tower.

In 1922 a substantial extension was made to the left of the mid-Victorian block, reflected in a valuation increase from £86 to £150. In 1938 a new chapel was consecrated at the west end of this extension. Further buildings were added to the rear in the 1960s, at which point the last remains of the original Violet Hill house were removed, including its original chapel. A series of labelled old photographs in the ground-floor corridor records that the original Violet Hill House was first rented by the Diocese of Dromore in 1829 and purchased outright in 1834, initially accommodating boarders attending a Catholic school in the town. When that town school closed, all teaching transferred to Violet Hill. The 1838 valuation describes the building as the 68ft by 21ft by 28ft residence of the Reverend Dr Blake, Roman Catholic Bishop, noting it contained a chapel and a school at that time. A photograph shows a mid-18th-century two-storey house with basement, five bays, hipped roof, and rendered walls. A new brick extension was added in the 1870s.

The main entrance and the section to its left were added in 1922, all unified with the original block under a single hipped natural slate roof. There are four chimney stacks. The rightmost and oldest is T-plan, set on the front wall with two flues to each of the three legs. It has a chamfered stone cap flush with the shaft, which is of red facing brick decorated by two strings of blue brick; just above where it meets the roof plane are stone-coped buttresses — the left and right with chamfered copings, the forward one with a gabled coping. The flues are expressed through the full building height by an advanced brick shaft. The other three stacks are transverse to the roof ridge, with canted caps and plain brick shafts.

The entrance bay is advanced and gabled with a dressed stone coping; the ridge is decorated by a finial cross and at eaves level by bracketed kneelers. The brickwork is in English garden wall bond. A relatively modern projecting square flat-roofed porch sits at ground-floor level, approached by five steps in concrete pre-cast paviors set between brick flanking walls with concrete copings, on which are mounted a pair of modern steel pillar lamps. The porch walls are in stretcher bond rusticated red facing brick — similar to the chapel — with a block parapet and projecting cornice, stone quoins matching the older work and running the full height of the bay. The front wall and each cheek of the porch have a canted granite base course and a flush granite sill course. The entrance itself has a segmental brick arch and a pair of timber, vertically sheeted, stained and varnished door leaves. Windows in each cheek of the porch are single semicircular-headed lights glazed in quarry-paned coloured leaded glass.

The corners of the advanced bay of the main building, where it is abutted by the porch, are dressed with stepped rusticated quarry-faced granite quoins. At first-floor level is a single 2/2 (vertically divided) painted timber sliding sash window with a semicircular head and segmental rusticated granite voussoirs, a granite label mould with square rusticated quarry-faced stops; the entire sill string course is projecting and moulded and runs the full length of the main facade. At second-floor level is a sliding sash window of the same type but with canted jambs and a segmental head, above which is a soldier brick arch with brick label mould over. A dressed stone flush sill course with a projecting sill runs the full length of the main facade at this level. Set into the gable above is a circular stone inscribed "1920."

The older section to the right of the entrance has a centred dressed granite plinth with rubble granite to ground level. Four brick courses above ground level is a flush granite ground-floor sill. Ground-floor window heads are a shallow pointed arch in dressed granite with an extrados of blue brick; the intrados is coved with a moulded stop leading into the canted jamb below. A continuous stone string runs at the springing of the window heads on all floors. First-floor windows have smooth-faced dressed semicircular-headed arches with blue brick extrados, resting on the continuous stone sill. Second-floor windows rest on the continuous flush sill course and have two blue brick strings, one at meeting-rail level and one above. All windows are 2/2 (horizontally divided) painted timber sliding sashes, arranged in three pairs at first and second-floor levels; at ground floor the central group is widened to three lights. The right-hand corner of this wing is canted, with a single window of the type described above at each floor level; the corner of the cant is in modern facing brick matching the porch.

The belvedere tower is buried at the junction between the older building and the 1960s extension on the right gable, and has been partly disfigured by the addition of a 1960s boiler flue to its rear right-hand corner. Its roof is copper with four unequal faces creating a short ridge, on which is mounted a copper cross. The eaves have a wide overhang incorporating an integral copper gutter discharging from open corner chutes. Below are windows paired on each face: the heads are shallow pointed arches dressed in granite with an extrados of blue header bricks; the intrados is coved and stopped as a transition into stepped jambs. There is a continuous dressed granite springing course and two blue brick strings within the window height. The windows themselves are double-hung painted timber, the glazing divided once horizontally in each sash, with a fixed overlight above.

To the left of the entrance bay the wall detailing follows the entrance bay treatment, with base course as on the east bays. Each floor has a pair of windows with a single window to its left. Ground-floor windows are 2/2 vertically divided sliding sashes with an additional two-paned segmental transom light over, and heads of rusticated granite voussoirs. First-floor windows are 2/2 vertically divided painted timber sliding sashes with semicircular heads and segmental rusticated granite voussoirs, granite label moulds with square rusticated quarry-faced stops. Second-floor windows are 2/2 vertically divided sliding sashes with soldier-course heads.

Beyond, to the left, is the two-storey wing connecting to the chapel, with a metal pepperpot ventilator on its pitched natural slate roof. Wall detailing follows the section west of the entrance bay. Ground-floor windows are identical to those described above; first-floor windows are taller 2/2 sliding sashes with an additional semicircular pane above. On each floor there is a set of four equally spaced windows followed to the left by a closely linked group of four. At ground floor, however, the last opening in this group is a doorway containing a pair of varnished three-panelled doors.

To the north, at the rear, the modern wing forming part of the quadrangle abuts an older flat-roofed ablution return containing an assortment of segmental and semicircular headed windows. The rear of the left-hand wing employs two distinct types of brick — four bays in one and the remainder in another. A single-storey lean-to in natural slate creates a corridor to the classrooms and chapel, with a skylight in each bay. Windows here are 2/2 painted timber sliding sashes with radiating brick heads and concrete sills. At the far end nearest the chapel is a modern varnished timber door with a Georgian-glazed upper half and two solid panels below.

To the rear of the right-hand wing the detailing is similar, but there are three storeys with seven windows on each. Second-floor window heads are segmental; those at first and ground floor are semicircular. A stone string course runs at the sill of the second-floor openings and at those of the first floor. On this side of the ablution block the older work forms a deep return of two storeys — four bays at ground floor and three at first floor — with segmental-headed windows throughout, all double-hung painted timber. There is a canted granite plinth with rubble granite below.