GLENARM SCHOOLHOUSE
Castle Street, Glenarm, Co Antrim
1983
The Schoolhouse, with the Barbican
behind
When William Thackeray wrote his Irish Sketchbook in 1834, he
recorded this rather drily as 'a school in the Early English taste',
although he describes the village and its Castle in some detail.
Mr & Mrs Hall, writing their Ireland in the same year, enthused
over this 'very pretty school house', where the 'little scolars
presented a clean, orderly and industrious appearance.' According
to the Ordnance Survey memoir written in 1853, the school had
been built in 1825, at a cost of £500, using cut stone brought
from Scotland at considerable expense. This would presumably be
the pinkish sandstone used in quoins and window dressings, the
main structure being of local basalt.
The building is closely associated with the Barbican gateway of
Glenarm Castle, a romantic turreted structure across the river
from it, and both were built by the Countess of Antrim, as recorded
in an inscription on the Barbican. When the present village school
was built, this building became redundant. It was used as a youth
club from 1967 to 1978, but fell vacant again until restoration
started in 1985. The original Parish Church of Glenarm stood somewhere
on the site of the building, and one large gravestone remained
behind the schoolhouse which had to be relocated to the present
church during the restoration.
Originally consisting of two halls laid out in a T-shaped plan,
conversion has involved the insertion of a new floor and staircase
in each hall to create a two-storey house. Despite these very
extensive internal changes, external alterations were restricted
to the addition of two rooflights at the rear, and the restoration
of the cast-iron lattice windows, many of which had been removed
over the years. The original doorway acts as a porch for both
houses.
Client: Hearth Housing
Association
Client: Hearth Housing Association
Architect: Hearth
Quantity Surveyor: McNeil Rainey & Best
Main Contractor: Martin & Hamilton, Ballymena
Restored: 1985-86
