Gates And Railings, Gatepiers, Boundary Walls, Former Dalmore School Including Ancillary Building, West Stirling Street

John Melvin and Son, 1885-6. Well-detailed tall single storey, 7-bay, Gothic, H-plan former Infant School, with centre bellcote (see Notes), much good interior detail and unaltered plan form, located close to open parkland on Alva's principal road. Squared and snecked rock-faced pink sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, base course and eaves cornice. Pointed-arch traceried windows, hoodmoulds with label stops, blind cinquefoils, stone transoms and mullions and raked cills.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: symmetrical principal elevation to S with traceried window to centre gabled bay with bellcote, large flanking bays with part-glazed double doors and timber doors beyond, that to right as shouldered arch doorway with 2-leaf boarded timber door and plate glass fanlight in angled gabled porch, and that to left as single panelled timber door with fanlight under consoled canopy. Outer gabled bays each with large traceried window and base of truncated stack to each gablehead.

Leaded diamond-pattern and small pane original glazing patterns in top hopper and casement windows throughout; some coloured glazing to top lights of traceried windows; all boarded. Small gray slates, decorative terracotta ridge tiles and slate-hung pagoda-type bases of ridge ventilators. Ashlar and harl stacks, some truncated. Stepped, coped ashlar skews with moulded skewputts and cast iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers, 2 undamaged griffins remain, and fixings.

INTERIOR: good decorative detail retained including architraved, panelled timber doors, boarded timber dadoes incorporating wall cupboards, dado rails with ironwork coat hooks and decorative cast iron radiators. Original plan form retained, comprising 2 large outer classrooms running N-S, each with sliding panelled timber dividing doors at centre; larger room at centre running E-W, with timber floor and hammerbeam-type roof; all 3 rooms with good boarded timber ceilings and circular decorative cast iron ventilators. Narrow linking corridor at rear with pointed-arch ceiling and decoratively detailed cast iron radiators.

ANCILLARY BUILDING: rectangular-plan playground shelter with steeply pitched slated piend roof on cast iron columns, now infilled in brick.

BOUNDARY WALLS, GATEPIERS, GATES AND RAILINGS: semicircular- and saddleback-coped rubble boundary walls, some with inset ironwork railings. 2 pairs of pyramidally-coped, square-section ashlar gatepiers to S, W pair retaining ironwork gate.