Abercorn School

The Abercorn School, built in 1878, comprises a single-story, four-bay rectangular school building and a three-bay gabled schoolhouse, along with an open play shed and a later boiler house. The construction features coursed sandstone rubble with polished ashlar dressings, long and short quoins, and a base course. A harled boiler house has stone dressings. Pointed arch windows are a prominent feature of the principal elevation, each having drip cills.

The southwest elevation, the principal facade, presents a four-bay school section. A piended, stone entrance porch is located in the re-entrant angle, featuring a panelled timber door with an arched plate glass fanlight above, set within an architraved door surround with a hoodmould and a small catslide roof. To the left is an advanced gabled bay with a stepped tripartite window under a continuous hoodmould, a small round window to the gablehead, and a decorative finial. The third bay has a hoodmoulded bipartite window with a stone mullion, eave-breaking with a small round window to its gablehead, and a slanted ventilation turret with a louvred stage and a slated pyramidal tower. The fourth bay features paired arched windows with a continuous hoodmould and a small hoodmoulded lancet window to the gablehead, topped with a decorative finial. A recessed stone lean-to is attached to the right, with a lancet window at its end. Adjoining this to the far right is an open, flat-roofed play shelter supported by cast-iron columns and featuring long cast-iron lintel girders, with a long playground boundary wall forming its rear. A later timber in-fill occupies the extreme left bay of the shelter.

The southeast elevation displays a gabled end with a now-blind moulded and architraved arched window, set under a hoodmould and small label-stops, and an ornate finial to the gablehead. A blind end of a later timber shelter partially obscures the ground floor. The northeast elevation (rear) has five regularly spaced bays, a later single-story boiler house lean-to with a boarded timber door, a window and door on its return, and a large harled stack rising to the rear right. A doorway is situated adjacent to the boiler house, with a further door to the left, alongside the rear elevation of the rubble play shelter. The northwest elevation has a gabled end adjoining a two-story, three-bay, multi-gabled schoolmaster’s house.

The windows are small-pane, with upper panes in a hopper arrangement, and there is a five-pane cast-iron rooflight on the northeast roof slope. Fixed circular windows are visible to the gableheads. The roof is covered in grey slate with stone ridging, aluminium flashing and valleys. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods are present, along with a tall ashlar roofline stack to the southeast gable of the main school, featuring battered coping, and a shouldered stack behind the entrance porch. The interior was not inspected in 2001.

The former schoolmaster's house is a two-story, three-bay, L-plan structure. Its southwest elevation has an entrance gable in the re-entrant angle, a timber entrance door within a modern glazed conservatory in the central bay, and a window to the first floor with a blind gablehead. An advanced bay to the right contains a centrally placed bipartite window on each floor. A recessed bay to the left also has a window to each floor. The southeast elevation has a gabled end adjoining the school building. The northeast elevation (rear) exhibits regularly placed bays on each floor, while the northwest elevation was not inspected in 2001.