5 Loup Road, Toomebridge, Co. Antrim, BT41 3TW

Detached three-bay two-storey farmhouse erected around 1850, now vacant, located north of Loup Road in Toomebridge facing south. The house is rectangular on plan with a pair of single-storey extensions to the rear.

The walls are roughcast rendered with painted smooth rendered reveals, chamfered quoins, plinth and band linking first floor cills. The pitched natural slate roof has overhanging eaves, painted timber fascia and bargeboards on profiled purlin ends. Chimneys are corbelled stretcher bond polychrome brick. Windows are painted timber sliding sash with horizontal divisions: 2/2 at ground floor and 1/2 at first floor, with painted stone sills unless otherwise stated. Cast-iron rainwater goods are present.

The principal south elevation is three-bay with a central entrance door. The door is a modern six-panel mahogany door with rectangular fanlight above. Three windows occupy the first floor, their cills linked by a smooth plaster band. The west gable has one 1/1 sliding sash window at ground floor level to the north. The north rear elevation is asymmetrical two-bay with a first floor window offset to the right from a central window and a ground floor door of vertically sheeted and beaded timber. The east gable has one 1/1 sliding sash window at ground floor level to the north, though the remainder of this elevation is obscured by ivy. Single-storey extensions have pitched slate roofs, corbelled eaves and roughcast walling; the eastern extension has two replacement 1/2 sliding sash windows in its east elevation.

The front garden is lawned and enclosed by a low-level roughcast wall with saddleback coping, accessed through a mild steel gate hung off square pillars with pyramidal caps. A concrete path runs from the gate to the entrance door and along the south elevation onto a concrete lane allowing access to the rear yard. The rear yard to the north is enclosed by pitched and lean-to single-storey outhouses running east-west and a wall to the west.

The house is an honest example of its period, retaining original plainly detailed features and simple finishes, with the horizontally divided sliding sash windows and brick chimney details of particular interest. The farmhouse and its setting provide a good example of a rural smallholding, once common but now increasingly rare.

Historical records show two detached buildings on the site in 1832, with the arrangement visible today first recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1857.