5 Townhall Street, Newtownstewart, Co. Tyrone, BT78 4AX

5 Townhall Street, Newtownstewart is an attached three-bay two-storey rendered house built around 1880, located on the east side of Townhall Street. The building forms part of a group with its neighbours at 7 and 9 Townhall Street, which flanked the contemporary former Newtownstewart Town Hall. Despite the loss of some original external features and interior detail, the house retains fine style, proportion and ornamentation. It occupies a prominent position in Newtownstewart adjacent to Newtownstewart Castle at the foot of Main Street.

The building is rectangular on plan and faces west, with a later two-storey pitched extension to the east. It is covered by a pitched artificial slate roof with red clay roll-top ridge tiles and polychromatic brick chimneysstacks. Remains of half-round metal gutters and projecting eaves on carved painted timber brackets survive. The walls are painted block-mark rendered over a plinth, with a stringcourse between ground and first floor and at first-floor lintel level, raised as segmental arch-heads over the first-floor windows.

The principal west elevation is symmetrical, featuring a raised-and-fielded four-panelled door with plate-glass fanlight at the centre, flanked by a single window to each side and with a window to each first-floor bay. Windows throughout are square-headed uPVC casements. The north gable is entirely abutted by an adjoining outbuilding, with the exposed section blank. The east elevation is partially abutted by a modern extension, with the exposed section pebbledashed and containing a single diminished window to each floor. The south gable is abutted by an adjoining building with a blank exposed section.

The house sits on Townhall Street with a paved rear court. An adjoining multi-bay two-storey outbuilding has a hipped artificial slate roof, cement-rendered walls and a variety of square-headed uPVC casement windows and replacement doors.

Historical records indicate that a building occupied the site from at least 1833, though the earliest town plan (1828-1840) has not survived. It is possible that a building on the site was occupied by Jones Crawford Esq and valued at £28 in documents from 1824. Griffith's Valuation records the large plot as a public house and offices valued at £24 13s 1d, noting it was a former gentleman's private residence, occupied by Patrick McGlenahan leasing from Daniel Baird. In 1877 the plot was split into two, and between 1879 and 1880 it was redeveloped and divided into three separate buildings. The 1879 records describe number 1b (the present 5 Townhall Street) as a shop, concert room and garden valued at £24 10s, occupied by Bernard Gillespie. By 1891 it had become a police barrack and office, leased from Bernard Gillespie and valued at £12 10s. The Annual Revisions Town Plans of 1898 and 1908 caption it as 'Constabulary Barrack'. In 1917 the value was raised to £16 5s, possibly indicating improvements. By 1922 it was no longer a police barrack and was leased as a house valued at £18. The 1934 valuation records show it occupied by Samuel Millikin, leased from Michael Gallagher and valued at £18 10s, consisting of a kitchen, scullery, pantry and two rooms downstairs, with four bedrooms, a boxroom and a bathroom upstairs. The valuer noted that one bedroom had been converted to a bathroom and there was hot and cold water. A photograph from around 1900 showing the building as a police barracks with RIC men standing outside is reproduced in "Newtownstewart Remembered".