Camus House, 46 Lisky Road, Strabane, Co Tyrone, BT82 8NR

Camus House is a detached three-bay, two-storey house built around 1870, standing on the east side of Lisky Road. It is a substantial building of good style and proportion, and its relatively plain exterior is enriched by corbelled eaves and sandstone dressings. The house incorporates an earlier two-storey rear return, thought to date from around 1855, which is of equal architectural importance to the main block. Together with its extensive range of outbuildings, walled garden, and associated flax-working structures to the east, the property makes a significant contribution to the local landscape and to the history of rural industry in the area.

The main house is rectangular on plan, with a hipped natural slate roof finished with blue-black clay ridge tiles over a corbelled brick eaves course. The principal elevation has dentilled eaves. The rendered chimneys are ruled-and-lined with replacement clay pots and sit on a central flat roof. Access to the interior is through a flat-roofed, timber-framed lobby leading to a timber stair with a cast-iron balustrade. The earlier rear return has a pitched natural slate roof with matching eaves detail, timber bargeboards, and roughcast rendered chimneys.

The external walls are painted roughcast render with smooth quoins over a smooth rendered plinth — the return has no plinth. A smooth string course runs at first-floor level. Windows throughout are square-headed, timber-framed sliding sashes: 2/2 panes on the principal elevation and 6/6 panes elsewhere, all with smooth reveals and sandstone sills. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee-profile gutters with round downpipes to the main house, and half-round gutters to the return.

The principal elevation faces west. At its centre is a chamfered sandstone entrance opening containing a square-headed, four-panelled timber door with a transom light above, reached by five sandstone steps with a chamfered sandstone parapet wall. Above this, a single window sits in a chamfered sandstone surround at first-floor level. To the left of centre, a rectangular projecting bay contains a window flanked by sidelights at both ground and first floor. To the right, a canted bay has a window to each cheek face at both floors.

The north elevation has a canted bay to the right with windows to each cheek at both floors, eaves matching the principal elevation, and a single window at each floor to the left. The east elevation is partly abutted by the return. The exposed section to the left contains a 9/9 sliding sash window at ground floor and a single window at first floor. The exposed section to the right contains a timber-panelled entrance door with glazed top panels, surmounted by a round-arched sliding sash stairwell window with stained glass, and a single window at each floor to the right. The south elevation has two windows at each floor.

The return faces east. Its south elevation has five openings at each floor, with the ground-floor left opening containing a replacement timber glazed door with a transom light. Its west elevation is abutted by the main house. The north elevation has three openings at each floor; the centre and right openings at ground floor each contain a replacement timber-panelled entrance door with transom light. The east elevation has a single window at each floor and at attic level.

Internally, the house retains a richly detailed Victorian interior. The plasterwork and joinery are distinctly late 19th-century in character, and internal evidence confirms the house's Victorian rather than Georgian origins, despite an earlier secondary source suggesting a late Georgian date.

The house sits within private grounds with a mature garden to the west and the remains of a walled garden bounded by rubble walling to the north-east. The site is entered from the road to the west through pairs of square rubble pillars supporting cast-iron gates, with a secondary pedestrian gate to the north-west and south-west. The driveway is bounded by a rubble retaining wall, with pedestrian access to an avenue approach through a pair of circular rubble piers via four sandstone steps.

To the south-east of the house lies an extensive range of single- and two-storey rubble outbuildings, all in good repair, with natural slate roofs, timber-framed windows, and vertically-sheeted doors, accessed through wrought-iron gates on a pair of circular rubble piers. Immediately south of the house is a lean-to shelter supported by a rubble boundary wall, and an L-shaped outbuilding with access to the yard through a segmental-arched opening. Further south, a courtyard is enclosed on three sides by outbuildings with hipped roofs — the east section being two-storey with a pitched roof — and on the north by a single-storey outbuilding. To the east of the courtyard, a flax drying green is bounded by rubble walling with square-headed slit openings. Beyond this, in the agricultural land to the east, stands a two-storey rubble flax mill with its wheel sandwiched between two mill buildings.

The history of the site is well documented. A group of buildings is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, to the north-west of the current buildings. By the second edition of 1855 this group is captioned "Camus", and by the third edition of 1905 the current house appears, captioned "Camus House", with a flax mill, mill pond, and mill race shown to the east. The front of the main house partially overlies the site of the earlier buildings, though none of the current buildings coincide with the 1855 group.

The Camus estate is recorded in Burke's Landed Gentry as part of the estate of the Smyly family from Castlederg, with a reference to John Smyly of Camus. The current owner records Smyly family ownership from the 17th century to the 20th century. The Townland Valuation records the property as a "dwelling, offices and cellar", with Robert Grier as occupier and a building valuation of £6 5s. Griffith's Valuation of 1858 records a "house, offices and land" occupied by Robert Grier on a freehold basis, the original lessor being the Lord Bishop of Derry, with a building valuation of £6 subsequently revised to £7. A marginal note in the valuation records reads: "R. Grier is in the lunatic asylum but is yet in possession."

A marginal note of 1873 in the Annual Revision reads: "Unfinished house 19x11½x2½a, 18x7?x2a. Mr Greer lives at present in the return. See in 1874." A further note states the property was "held under a Bishop's lease forever." A flax mill and two scutchers' houses were also added to the fieldbook at this time. The valuation rises from £7 to £20 in 1873 and to £60 in 1876, consistent with the late Victorian character of the main house. The flax mill is valued at £15. By 1889 the mill is valued at £10 as only two stocks were worked; the main house valuation increases to £66 in 1896 following an appeal; and the flax mill is recorded as converted into a threshing mill and valued with the offices before being deleted from the fieldbook in 1896.