It sat quietly serving its local community for well over a century before closing in 1976, and for a period after that it sat quietly doing nothing at all, its rear windows blocked up, its yard divided in two, its two brick chimneys cold.

The building appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, labelled as Banteer National School, a rectangular structure aligned roughly north to south with a small projection to the west. The front elevation faces east across seven bays, with double sash windows and brick-built gabled porch projections flanking three central bays. It is a composed, considered piece of design for a rural school of its era, the kind of building that reflects early National School Board ambitions to give even remote communities a recognisable, well-made civic presence. The hipped slate roof and twin chimneys give it a domestic solidity. In 1994, work began to repurpose the old schoolhouse as the Banteer Old School Heritage and Drama Centre, a conversion recorded by Eldridge in 1996, suggesting that the local community saw in the building something worth preserving beyond mere sentiment.