The Old School, Port Logan

The Old School, Port Logan

This is a single-storey, T-plan former school building, now converted to a house, constructed around 1867. It sits on high ground overlooking Port Logan Bay and village, surrounded by its own garden on the site of the former playground.

The building is constructed in painted random rubble with red sandstone long and short quoins and window margins, finished with droved and stugged tooling. The gable apexes are topped with stone ball finials, and some gables feature small dressed stone details with blind double circle motif cut-outs.

The shorter south-facing section, originally three bays, is slightly taller than the longer three-bay section extending northward from it. A gabled entrance porch is positioned off-centre to the right on the west elevation. Two double-shouldered chimney stacks, built in dressed stone and rubble, occupy the west elevation wallhead. The rear windows on the east elevation have plain cills and lintels. Windows throughout are four-pane timber sash and case, and the roof is finished in graded slates with a zinc ridge and stone skews.

Boundary walls of rubble with rubble coping extend along the south, east and west of the building. A late 20th-century timber conservatory is attached to the left of the south elevation but is excluded from the listing, as is a small outbuilding.

The interior was inspected in 2020. Room partitions and the decorative scheme date from the conversion to residential use in the later 20th century.

Port Logan School was built around 1867, evidenced by an 1867 article in The Alloa Journal recording a new teacher's appointment to the school. The schoolhouse was constructed adjacent to it in 1876 to accommodate the headmaster. Both structures first appear on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map (surveyed 1894, printed 1895), which shows the school playground divided into two sections with outbuildings crossing the dividing wall.

The school closed in 1959 and was subsequently converted to a house. Documentary sources and stonework details—particularly the finials—are consistent with contemporary work at nearby Logan House, which underwent extensive remodelling by architect David Bryce in 1874 in the Scottish Baronial style.

An aerial photograph from around 1990 documents that windows were altered from 12-pane to four-pane sash and case, a chimney stack was removed from the east elevation (where a small stone gablet still breaks the roof eaves), and a roofless outbuilding that spanned the central playground wall became roofless. Only the southern half of this outbuilding remained as of 2020. A timber conservatory was added to the south gable in 1997.