1861 – Model School, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford

Architect: James H. Owen / Board of Public Works

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Opened in 1861 as a Model National School. Demolished in 1998 after being used by St. Mary’s CBS since the late 1940s.

Description from The Dublin Builder, May 1 1861: “This building has been recently completed by the Board of Public Works in the immediate neighburhood of the town of Enniscorthy, facing the river Slaney and the main roads from the town to Wexford and New Ross, and at a a distance of about 100 feet from the latter. The site contains two Irish acres, presenting nearly 400 feet frontage to road, and is partly enclosed, with dwarf wall, surmounted by a neat iron railing, and having cut stone coping and piers, and partly by walls of rubble masonry, with plain half round coping. The ground in front of the building is laid out in terraces and slopes, and a circuitous drive leads from the entrance gate, which is placed near the angle next town, to the upper terrace. AR the rere are playgrounds for the boys, girls , and infants respectively.

The ground floor comprehends boys’s schoolroom, 40 feet by 36 feet; girls 31 feet by 26 feet; infants 31 feet by 20 feet, with class, cap, and cloak rooms in proximity, dining hall, 18 feet by 18 feet; masters’ apartments &c., &c. On the first floor are dormitories, bedrooms for pupil teachers, lavatories &c., &c.

Judging from the photograph forward to us, the building presents an effective exterior of irregular outline and Italian character, the infant school and classroom forming a one-storey wing. With rusticated Portland cement pedestal, semi-circular headed windows and cantilever roof, the center, containing entrance hall and porch, and the other wing, in which dining-room and study are situated, being two storeys in height and having gabled terminations. Owing to the nature of the ground, the basement storey is only visible at one side (the latter) and on portion of the front, and has square headed windows with battered and rusticated piers in cement, the windows of the principal floors on this portions being also mostly square headed but all of those on the first floor are semicircular headed, either single or in couplets, with dressings and keystones. The material for walling is local rubble stone, the exterior from level of sills of ground floor windows, and the chimney shafts being faced with red pressed brick from Courtown, granite being employed for the strings, chimney cape &c.”