1 Davies Road, Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone BT78 4NH

A detached three-bay two-storey direct-entry vernacular dwelling of early nineteenth-century date, located on the east side of Davies Road at Newtownstewart. The building is rectangular on plan with a single-storey lean-to porch to the west and a bay to the north added around 1900.

The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles and smooth rendered chimneys. The walls are painted roughcast, with lime-rendered rubble construction to the south elevation and smooth render to the east elevation and porch. Windows are square-headed timber-framed 2/2 sliding sashes with painted masonry sills. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes serve as rainwater goods.

The principal elevation faces west and was originally two bays. The central bay contains a window at each floor, flanked to the right by a porch containing a vertically-sheeted timber door surmounted by a single window at first floor. The right bay contains a window at each floor. The left bay, a later addition, contains a single window. The north gable contains two small 1/1 sliding sash windows at first floor, abutted on the right by a shed. The east elevation is largely overgrown with openings not visible. The south gable contains two timber casement windows at first floor.

Access to the house is directly from the road at the west. Access to the rear yard is through a pair of wrought-iron gates at the south, supported on square rendered pillars at the south corner of the house. An attached single-storey barrel-roofed shed stands at the north with corrugated metal roof and roughcast rendered walls to the north, largely repaired with corrugated metal. Modern outbuildings and yards lie to the north and west. A range of outbuildings at the south includes a mono-pitched rubble outbuilding with corrugated roof at the road-side, abutted to the south by a one-and-a-half-storey pitched rubble outbuilding with natural slate roof, and a single-storey red brick stable-block to the south-east with monopitched corrugated metal roof.

The right-hand side of the house retains much of its original external character and materials, though the building has been extensively altered and extended during the twentieth century, resulting in significant loss of internal layout, detailing, and architectural character.

The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, together with additional buildings to the north and north-west. According to Griffith's Valuation of 1859, the house and outbuildings were divided into two separate plots. The house was then occupied by Michael Rea and valued at £2, while the buildings later to become outbuildings were occupied by Christopher Hutchinson as dwelling and offices and valued at £1 10s. Annual revision records show the lessor was Reverend James McIvor, later amended to the Church Temporalities Commissioner in 1872 and to the Irish Land Commissioner in 1888. James McElrea became owner in fee of the house in 1878. By 1890, Miller McElrea had become owner of the buildings to the north and by 1892 owned them in fee. A marginal note of 1894 records the house being used as an office, resulting in the valuation being reduced to £1. By 1901, rebuilding work had taken place to the outbuildings, which were revalued at £2 15s. By 1903, Miller McElrea owned the house, and in 1905 it was subject to remodelling and revalued at £3 10s. The two plots were subsequently treated as one, with the house valued at £4 and the outbuildings at £2 5s. Field inspection suggests the house was extended by the addition of a bay to the north around 1900, and it is possible it was raised a storey at the same time.