What makes it quietly notable is not its size or grandeur but its continuity: a structure recorded as a National School on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1846 and still functioning as a school today.

The building is T-shaped in plan, with a five-bay front facing northwest and a central gabled porch projection adding the cross-stroke of the T. Three chimneys punctuate the gable-ended roof, one on each end gable and a third set slightly off-centre to the right, a small asymmetry that suggests the building may have been adapted or extended at some point. The National School system, introduced in Ireland in 1831, was one of the most ambitious state-led education projects of the nineteenth century, bringing standardised primary schooling to towns and rural parishes across the country. By the time the Ordnance Survey cartographers were mapping Kenmare in the mid-1840s, this building was already established enough to earn its label on their sheet.