Killowen School, Killowen Old Road, Killowen, Rostrevor, Newry, Co Down, BT34 3AE

Killowen School is a small rural schoolhouse of single-storey, single-bay construction located on Killowen Old Road, south-facing to the rear of its playground. Though displaying character and assured design, it is not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.

The building is constructed of rubble stone with painted wet dash rendering to all walls. The pitched natural slate roof is finished with a red tile verge and has a painted, stepped rendered chimney on each gable. Rainwater goods are semicircular cast iron.

The principal facade features a raised eaves course, a smooth rendered and painted basecourse, and a central gable porch. The porch itself has a pitched natural slate roof aligned at ridge to eaves with the main roof. Its gable is coped with a gabletted apex stone and moulded kneelers, with walls of dashed render and a basecourse matching the main facade. The gable contains an ashlar granite plaque inscribed "KILLOWEN / NATIONAL / SCHOOL / AD 1910". Stepped painted smooth render quoins frame each corner and opening.

Two four-panelled doors with bolection moulded, raised and fielded panels occupy the porch gable, each with a segmental head set within a deep segmental headed opening. The reveals and heads are stop-end chamfered, with segmental hoods above featuring foliated label tops (the left one is missing) and stepped quoins. The left and right cheeks of the porch each contain a single segmental headed 2×2 fixed timber window, detailed as the doors with similar reveals, hoods and splayed rendered cills.

The facade walls flanking the porch are symmetrical. Each contains two tall 2×2 fixed timber windows with the same segmental heads, reveals, hoods and stepped quoins as those on the porch. The left and right gables are without openings.

The rear elevation is abutted at its centre by a modern gabled single-storey return with an artificial slate roof that partially ties into the main roof. The remaining rear walls to left and right each contain one window matching those on the facade but without decorative reveals and label stops. The return is smooth rendered with a chamfered render basecourse, and features modern stained timber windows on its rear gable and left cheek, with a modern timber and glass door on its right cheek.

To the front, a modern playground is enclosed by a rendered wall with a wrought iron pedestrian gate. At the playground front stands a much altered earlier structure which may have been the original school.

The site has a complex history. Ordnance Survey mapping from 1834 shows an Roman Catholic chapel at this location, with a school located a short distance south-west on the new Newry–Kilkeel road. According to the 1836 Ordnance Survey Memoir, this school was established around 1819. The 1838 Valuation records the chapel dimensions as 50 feet 6 inches by 28 feet by 15 feet. By 1859, Killowen National School had moved to a new building immediately south of the chapel. The 1863 Valuation identifies the chapel as "Yelverton Chapel" (referring to an infamous elopement and marriage) and describes the school as two storeys high. The 1901 Ordnance Survey map marks the chapel as disused. The present school occupies the site of the former chapel. The datestone indicates construction in 1910, and the uniformity of its decoration and internal plan form suggests it represents a new build rather than a refurbishment of the earlier chapel.