Strathfoyle, Derry Road, Strabane, Co Tyrone BT82 8DX

Strathfoyle is a large detached Victorian house built around 1880, set within its own landscaped grounds on the west side of Derry Road, Strabane. It is square on plan and faces east, with the grounds accessed via a curved gravel avenue that opens onto Derry Road to the southeast.

The house is two storeys, rendered throughout, and presents a four-opening-wide principal east elevation. The ground floor walling is finished in band-rusticated render below a continuous moulded string course, while the first floor is painted ruled-and-lined render. Decorative rusticated rendered quoins and a projecting plinth course run around the building, and there are panelled aprons to the canted bays at first-floor level.

The roofline is hipped natural slate with rolled lead ridges and hips, and four tall rendered chimneystacks with clay pots. The full-height three-sided canted bays — one to the front and one to the rear elevation, and a pair to the south side elevation — have hipped roofs with flat tops enclosed by decorative cast-iron cresting. Deep dentilled eaves carry moulded cast-iron guttering, with round cast-iron downpipes below.

All windows are square-headed with 1/1 timber sash windows, having moulded rendered sills. Surrounds are plain to the bay windows and moulded, lugged, and kneed to all other openings. The south elevation is symmetrical, two windows wide, contained entirely within the pair of full-height three-sided canted bays and detailed to match the front. The west elevation is three openings wide, with a central full-height three-sided canted bay and a single-storey shallow projecting bay to the right; the canted bay here has a hardwood glazed door inserted at ground level, reached by a flight of concrete steps with a low concrete wall.

The principal entrance on the east elevation sits to the left of centre. It is a round-headed opening containing a double-leaf timber door with prismatic panelling, a lintel cornice, and a plain semicircular fanlight. The opening is flanked by a pair of flat-panelled render pilasters and foliate console brackets rising to an egg-and-dart springer moulding, a moulded archivolt, and a diamond-faced keystone. The door opens onto two concrete steps enclosed by a pair of low flanking walls terminating in panelled stone piers with modern urns. A brass push-bell is inset to the right. To the left end of the principal elevation is a shallow projecting bay containing a double window.

The rear elevation faces west and is three openings wide. A lower two-bay two-storey return abuts it to the right, and a single-storey entrance porch sits to the centre, now with a replacement hardwood panelled door; the return has replacement timber casement windows. At half-landing level, a single round-headed window in the centre of the rear elevation contains a single-pane timber sash window with coloured margin lights. A lower two-bay two-storey return projects to the north side of the rear elevation.

To the north side elevation is a small enclosed yard flanked by a range of single-storey and two-storey rendered outbuildings with pitched natural slate roofs. These have square-headed window openings with redbrick lintels and vertically-sheeted timber doors and shutters. On the north elevation of the two-storey outbuilding, a disused lane is closed by a pair of decorative cast-iron gates attached to the outbuilding, with a further wrought-iron gate to the road.

The entrance from Derry Road to the southeast is formed by a pair of timber gates hung between sandstone ashlar piers, with curved rendered screen walls terminating in further stone piers; all piers carry profiled capstones.

The house first appears in Annual Revision valuation records in 1884, when it is described as a house, offices, and land occupied by Robert Smyth and leased from the Duke of Abercorn, with the buildings valued at £46 10s. Robert Smyth and his son operated a successful milling business in Canal Street from around 1880, and the family continued in business until the 1980s. The mill was a significant local enterprise: a history of farming families in the Strabane area records that oats, and occasionally barley and wheat, were sold by local farmers to Smyth's mill. Robert Smyth became a Justice of the Peace in 1884. The house first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map in 1906, captioned "Strathfoyle", the same year Robert Smyth became the owner in fee under the land purchase legislation of the early 20th century.

In 1909, a motor shed measuring 18 by 24½ by 12 feet was added to the site, constructed in cemented rubble with a concrete inspection well, at a cost of approximately £45 in addition to materials, raising the valuation by £1 10s to £48. By 1918 the house had passed to W.B. Smyth, who in 1920 improved and remodelled the stables to the rear, bringing the valuation to £60; the valuer described the house at this time as a "fine residence". In 1922, W.B. Smyth installed an electric light plant in a small building erected at a cost of around £100, housing a 2½ horsepower gas engine drawing on the town gas supply and operating for approximately six hours once a week in winter and once a fortnight in summer. The valuer's notes from this period record the house as containing, on the ground floor: three reception rooms, a smoke room, kitchen, scullery, and lavatory; and on the first floor: six bedrooms, a bathroom, and a water closet, together with good stabling, a motor house, coach house, and associated structures. The valuation was consequently raised to £70. By 1934 a plan and dimensions were recorded showing the house, stables, motor house, and engine room, with a valuation of £85; a summer house on the grounds, previously noted as having a wooden roof, is by this date described as thatched.

A valuation appeal in 1935 resulted in a reduction to £75. The valuer's notes describe the house as an "oldish house, excellent repair, well planned, good light rooms", noting that it had been modernised and now featured electric light, an electric lift from the ground to the first floor, and an excellent bathroom, with the outside offices in good order and several loose boxes kept for the owner's horses.

W.B. Smyth was a keen golfer and served as the first captain of Strabane Golf Club on its foundation in 1909. In 1913 he was recommended for a place on the Finance and Business Committee that Edward Carson had promised to establish in Ulster in the event of Home Rule being introduced.