40 Carn Road, Castlederg, Co.Tyrone, BT81 7UU

A three-bay two-storey farmhouse located on the west side of Carn Road, Castlederg, built between 1840 and 1859. The house exemplifies the transition between vernacular and formal architectural styles characteristic of nineteenth-century rural building. A structure first appears on the site on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, which may form the basis of the current house.

The building is rectangular on plan with a central lean-to porch. Walling is pebble-dashed random coursed rubble with rusticated smooth render quoins. The roof is pitched natural slate with roll-moulded clay ridge tiles and rendered chimneystacks to gables. Rainwater goods are half-round cast-iron, partially detached, over stone eaves corbels.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged about the central lean-to porch, which has ruled-and-lined rendered walls and a concrete slab roof. The door has four bolection moulded panels with a central bronze knob and a rectangular geometric fanlight above. Windows are vestiges of 3/6 and 6/6 timber sashes with smooth rendered reveals having decorative heads. Sills are concrete. The left gable is blank and is abutted by the vestiges of a lean-to byre, now roofless, with random rubble stone walls and a single window opening to the west with stone lintel and sill. The rear elevation is abutted by a central lean-to extension with a corrugated metal roof. This extension has a small window to either side at ground floor, now gone, and first floor has two metal-framed 8/16 pivot casements. The right gable is blank.

The house retains traditional elements including thick rubble stone walls and a substantial stone hearth. Evidence of timber shutters survives. The ground floor hearth and thick walling suggest an earlier single-storey structure that has been raised and remodelled in the early twentieth century.

The property occupies a mature farmyard setting with a two-storey barn to the rear and a variety of single-storey stone outbuildings to the south with remains of pitched natural slate roofs and timber sheeted stable doors. Access is via a mature grassed lane from the north-east.

Historical records show Griffith's Valuation of 1859 listed a house, offices and land valued at £2 5s, occupied by William Sproule and leased from Sir Robert Ferguson. In 1862 the lessor changed to William Knox and the valuation reduced to £2. The property remained in the Sproule family throughout the Annual Revisions period from 1860 to 1929. By 1933 Samuel Sproule had become the owner in fee under early twentieth-century land purchase legislation. The valuation subsequently increased to £5 and 15s for outbuildings, suggesting a rebuilding or remodelling of the main house in the preceding years. By 1933 the house comprised a kitchen, porch, three rooms and four bedrooms. The valuer noted that clean water was distant from the house.

Further buildings appear to the west on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904–5 and to the south of the main house by the fourth edition of 1951.

Although of architectural interest, the building's character has been degraded due to loss of historic fabric and detailing, and is not considered worthy of listing. The building is recorded as derelict.