C. & W. McQuoid — The builders behind the school

The people who built Newtownbreda Primary School left a much smaller paper trail than the architects who designed it, but enough records show that C. & W. McQuoid was an established Belfast building firm operating in the early and middle decades of the twentieth century.

The firm's name appears in Belfast street directories as far back as 1912, when C. & W. McQuoid were listed as builders on Beatrice Street. They were still recorded there in 1918, showing that the partnership was already established well before the construction of the Newtownbreda school in 1938. By 1951, the firm was listed as “C. & W. McQuoid, Ltd., builders and contractors”, with the directories recording houses being built in Beatrice Street. These entries suggest a firm involved not simply in occasional building work but in the wider expansion of Belfast's housing and built environment.

One of the clearest surviving examples of their work was Belvoir Park Golf Club's original clubhouse, designed by James Scott and constructed from 1928 by C. & W. McQuoid of Roden Street. The clubhouse was built as part of the development of the new golf course at Belvoir Park and occupied a prominent position overlooking the Lagan Valley. The club's own history confirms McQuoid's role in its construction, providing a useful contemporary example of the firm's work in south Belfast.

The company also appears to have worked regularly with architects Ferguson & McIlveen, the same practice responsible for Newtownbreda Public Elementary School. A planning history for the former Rosetta Masonic Lodge Hall on Park Road records that the building was designed by Ferguson & McIlveen and built by C. & W. McQuoid, dating its construction to between 1928 and 1932. This provides further evidence of an established working relationship between the architect and contractor.

That connection is particularly interesting when looking back at Newtownbreda Primary School. The Dictionary of Irish Architects records the 1938 Public Elementary School on School Road as a Ferguson & McIlveen design, and names C. & W. McQuaid as the builder. The contemporary Belfast directories, however, identify the established construction firm as C. & W. McQuoid. Until an original 1938 building notice, contract or newspaper report is found to resolve the spelling, it is safest to acknowledge both forms when discussing the school.

What is perhaps most interesting is how little we know about the individual people behind the company. Unlike Robert Ferguson and Samuel McIlveen, whose professional careers are well documented, the surviving online record gives us few details about the partners themselves. We can, however, see the firm's presence growing through Belfast's directories and through the buildings it helped construct. By the 1930s and 1940s, Belfast was expanding rapidly, and contractors such as McQuoid were responsible for turning architectural plans into schools, houses, clubhouses and other buildings that would become part of the everyday landscape of the city.

The story of Newtownbreda Primary School therefore involves more than the architects alone. Ferguson & McIlveen produced the design, while the builders and tradesmen of C. & W. McQuoid turned that design into the five-classroom building that opened in 1938 — the “wee side” remembered by generations of pupils. Fifteen years later, the school would expand again with the opening of the “big side” and Assembly Hall in 1956.

Today, very little remains to identify the people who physically constructed the school. Their names survive mainly in old directories, architectural records and references to other buildings. Yet every wall they put up once formed part of a living place, filled for decades with children, teachers, laughter and memories.

For a building like Newtownbreda Primary, that is perhaps the most fitting legacy of all.

The architects drew the lines. The builders gave them form. The children gave the building its life.