Description
Detached two-bay single-storey rubble stone Tudor-style former Church of Ireland school, c.1860, retaining original fenestration with single-bay single-storey gabled advanced porch to right. Extended, c.1990, comprising single-bay single-storey return to rear to north-east. Now disused. Gable-ended roof with slate (gabled to porch). Clay ridge tiles. Cut-stone chimney stack with polygonal flue. Cut-stone coping to gables. Cast-iron rainwater goods on cut-stone corbelled eaves course. Gable-ended roof to return. Corrugated-iron. Rendered chimney stack. uPVC rainwater goods. Polygonal rubble limestone walls (possibly repointed, c.1990). Chamfered corners to porch. Cement rendered walls to return. Ruled and lined. Unpainted. Rendered quoins. Paired shallow segmental-headed window opening in cut-stone surround with hood moulding over (single window opening to porch with similar blind opening to gable to side elevation to north-west). Diamond-leaded fixed-pane iron windows. Shallow elliptical-headed door opening to porch. Moulded cut-stone surround. Timber door. Square-headed window opening to return. Concrete sill. Timber shutters. Interior with early fireplace and timber panelled doors. Set back from road in own grounds. Overgrown grounds to site. Section of decorative cast-iron railings, c.1860, to boundary on cut-stone plinth with foliate finials.
Appraisal
Geraldine Hall, designed by E. McAlister and originally built as a Church of Ireland School, is of considerable social and historical significance as one of the earliest educational facilitates in the locality, and one sponsored by a church body. Now disused, the former school nevertheless retains most of its original form and character – inappropriately extended in the late twentieth century an alternative use might be found for the building that could be contained solely in the original portion of the school, thus allowing the removal of the later addition. The construction of the former school in rubble limestone attests to the high quality of stone masonry traditionally practised in the locality – this is especially evident in the cut-stone dressings to the window openings, and so on, that have retained a crisp intricacy – while the pattern of the polygonal stone arrangement allows for an attractive rhythmic effect. The former school retains many important early or original features and materials, in various states of repair, including diamond-leaded fenestration, timber fittings to the door opening and a slate roof, together with fittings to the interior. Set in its own grounds, the school is an attractive, if subtle, feature on the streetscape of Leinster Street and represents a component of the development of that street throughout the nineteenth century.