Brook House, 29 Spout Road, Cavanalee, Strabane BT82 8NB

Brook House is a detached, multi-bay, two-storey rendered house built around 1895–1898, sitting on an elevated site facing west to the south of Spout Road in the rural townland of Cavanalee. Despite its rural setting, the house has more in common with urban or suburban houses of its era, making it an unusual presence in the landscape.

The building is rectangular on plan and has a gabled breakfront, a lower two-storey return with a flat-roofed extension to the south, and both front and side entrance porches. The roofs are pitched natural slate with lead valleys, roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles, and terracotta finials to the gables. Four large red brick chimneystacks rise above the roofline, each with a heavy moulded cement cornice and terracotta pots. Moulded cast-iron guttering is fixed to a timber box fascia, with cast-iron downpipes running down the walls. Decorative timber barge-boards appear on all gables, including the lucarne openings.

The walls are finished in pebbledash render, with rusticated smooth rendered quoins and a plinth course. A continuous moulded string course runs above the ground floor. Ground floor window openings are square-headed; first floor openings are segmental-headed. Both have moulded architrave surrounds, concrete sills, and single-pane timber sash windows with ogee horns.

The front west elevation is three bays wide over two storeys, with a gabled breakfront to the right and a single-storey, square-plan entrance porch at the centre. The breakfront windows are arranged in pairs, each pair sharing a single concrete sill. The entrance porch has a flat roof with cast-iron cresting and a moulded cornice below. It has a window opening to the front and, on the left cheek, a square-headed door opening with a moulded architrave surround and keystone. The door itself is a four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and brass furniture, served by a replacement rectangular overlight and opening onto two concrete steps.

The north side elevation is single-bay and two-storey with a gable facing the road, and is joined by a recessed three-bay two-storey return that also faces the road and forms part of the same elevation. The side gable windows are arranged in pairs, as on the front. First floor windows in the return are lucarnes with decorative timber barge-boards and terracotta finials. A modern square-plan timber-framed side entrance porch gives access to this side of the house.

The rear east elevation is abutted by the return and a further flat-roofed extension to the south. There is a single window opening at first floor level on the rear elevation. Between the return and the rear elevation is a small projection below eaves level, roofed in hipped natural slate and raised above the level of the return roof. The south side elevation is single-bay and two-storey with a gable, having a single ground floor window. The flat-roofed extension on this side has a large modern timber casement window and a hardwood glazed door.

The house sits in landscaped grounds with mature trees. The area to the north of the house is finished in concrete and enclosed to the road by a low rendered wall with decorative cast-iron railings and matching vehicular and pedestrian gates on octagonal cast-iron posts. The rest of the site is enclosed by rubblestone walling. Directly opposite the entrance gates to the north is a farmyard on the site of a former threshing mill, now occupied by cement-rendered farm buildings.

Internally, the house retains much of its original joinery and a fine polished timber staircase.

The house replaces an earlier building on the site recorded since at least the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833. A flax mill to the north-east of the site appears from the second edition map of 1854 and is shown as disused by the third edition of 1905. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 records a house, offices, and land valued at 15 shillings, leased by John Young from the Marquis of Abercorn; a flax mill is also listed. Subsequent valuation records show Jane Young as occupier from 1879 and Joseph Young from 1890. In 1898, the valuation of the plot rises sharply from 10 shillings to £5 10 shillings, indicating a rebuild of the house at that time. The valuation was appealed by Young and subsequently reduced to £5. Valuers' notes include a plan and dimensions of the house, with the cost estimated at £231 and later reduced to £197. By 1894, the mill is recorded as down and a new slated barn had been built at a cost of around £150. In 1898 a threshing and grinding mill was built nearby, valued at £10 and noted to be used only for the owner's own grinding and threshing. By 1904 the house and mill are valued together at £20, and valuers' notes record that the house had been extended to the east, its estimated cost rising to £428; it is noted at this point to have a bath and hot and cold water. Additional outbuildings including a stable, coach house, and dairy are also shown by this date. In 1906 Joseph Young became the owner in fee of the property under early 20th-century land purchase legislation.

A local history of Edymore and Cavanalee townlands records that John Young became the tenant of farm No. 13 in Cavanalee around 1850 and built a modest flax mill shortly afterwards. After John Young's death in 1877, his widow Jane became the tenant, followed on her death in 1889 by her son Joseph. Towards the end of the century the flax mill fell out of use and Joseph Young installed a threshing mill in an adjoining building. By around 1900 he had built the substantial new farmhouse known as Brook Villa on the 1905 Ordnance Survey map, and later as Brook House. The original house had only six windows but was extended to the east by the time of the 1905 map, giving it eight windows. Local folk memory holds that Joseph Young's wife was a wealthy American widow whose children were from her first marriage, which may account for how Joseph Young came to be the first man in Cavanalee to own a car and to build a substantial new house there. The house is also known to have been occupied by an RAF officer during the Second World War, who made a sketch of it.

The house first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as Brook Villa, and on the fourth edition of 1951 as Brook House.