That date places the building among the earliest generation of national schools in Ireland, established in the years immediately following the foundation of the National Board of Education in 1831, which created for the first time a state-funded system of elementary schooling across the country. The school's survival, more or less intact, gives it a quiet interest that its later uses only add to.

The building is constructed in coursed random-rubble limestone with ashlar quoins, the dressed corner stones that give a more finished edge to an otherwise rough-hewn wall surface. The front elevation runs to five bays, with flat-arched window openings fitted with sash windows, and coursed ashlar chimney stacks rise above the gable ends. More unusual is the ornate quatrefoil niche carved into each gable end, each with a central ventilation slit. A stone staircase built over an archway on the northwest gable provides access to a first-floor round-headed doorway, an arrangement that suggests the two floors may at some point have functioned semi-independently. One first-floor window in the southeast gable is now blocked, and a single-storey porch with a hipped roof and brick detailing was added sometime in the late nineteenth century, layering a later pragmatism onto the original design. To the rear, a yard is divided into two sections, perhaps once separating boys from girls as was standard practice in national schools of the period.

By the time the building was recorded, it had already moved some distance from its original purpose, having served as a furniture store before being converted into a theatre. That trajectory, from schoolroom to warehouse to performance space, is not unusual for nineteenth-century institutional buildings in Irish country towns, but the quality of the original stonework and the survival of so many early features make this particular example worth a closer look if you find yourself passing through the north end of Charleville.