Castletown House, 91 Urney Road, Strabane, Co Tyrone, BT82 9RT

Castletown House is a detached five-bay one-and-a-half-storey house built around 1865 on the site of an earlier house, located to the west side of Urney Road in Strabane. The building is rectangular in plan with a single-storey canted bay and two-storey porch to the east, a lower one-and-a-half-storey annex to the south, a two-storey gabled return to the north-west, and a single-storey cat-slide return to the west.

The exterior is finished with roughcast render over a painted plinth. The pitched roofs are covered in natural slate with blue and black ridge tiles, and the chimneys are smooth rendered with replacement clay pots. Windows are mainly square-headed timber-framed 1/1 sliding sash, with round-arched-headed windows to the first floor and painted masonry sills throughout.

The principal elevation faces east. From left to right, bay one contains a single window at ground floor and a hipped half-dormer to the left; bay two is abutted at ground floor right by the canted bay with a single window to each cheek and a hipped half-dormer to the left; bay three is abutted by a hipped porch with a round-arched-headed window to each floor and a six-panelled timber entrance door to the north; bay four contains two windows at ground floor and a hipped half-dormer to the right; bay five contains two windows at ground floor. The southern annex has two windows at ground floor flanked at right by a replacement uPVC entrance door, with a central hipped half-dormer above; its gable is blank. The west elevation projects with a small window at ground floor left and two windows at ground floor right, a central hipped half-dormer, and a south gable that is blank. The west elevation proper consists of five bays, with a gabled return containing two windows at each floor abutting bay two, and a lean-to return with a replacement timber panelled door at left and a single window to the right, plus a hipped dormer containing a square-headed window at first floor. An exposed section to the left shows a round-arched-headed stairwell window. Bay five contains a single window at ground floor surmounted by a hipped half-dormer. The north gable contains two windows at first floor.

Access to Castletown House from Urney Road is via a narrow lane which curves as it approaches the house and crosses a mid-Victorian railway bridge. The railway line is no longer in place. The bridge is a single span structure built on the skew, with clay bricks to the soffit. It is mainly constructed of random rubble stone with contrasting rock-faced platband and copings; the arch has been built up on one side with a rendered wall and is currently used for straw storage.

The house is set within extensive grounds, bounded to the river at west by wire fencing and to the property at east by rendered walling surmounted by steel railings. The roof features cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes.

The original plan layout consisted of four principal rooms at each floor accessed from a central stair hall. Subdivision of the building has broken down these large spaces into smaller living accommodation, diminishing internal interest. However, some good quality original features remain internally, including fireplaces and stairs.

Historical records show that a building captioned "Castletown House" appears on the first and second Ordnance Survey maps (1832 and 1855). By 1905, this house had fallen into disuse and been replaced by an adjacent building now bearing the name "Castletown House". Griffith's Valuation (1857) records the occupier of the earlier house as Samuel Colhoun, who held it in fee and valued at £5 10s. In the Valuation Revisions of 1860–1864, the house was revised in value to £10, indicating a possible date of rebuilding. The occupier was revised to John Colhoun in 1873. In 1872, further increases in the value of the plot suggest additions to the building. A gate lodge was added to the plot in 1894, valued at £1 15s, revised to £3 in 1911; this lodge has since been demolished.

The house has been little changed in external appearance and is simply detailed. Its interesting architectural form, consisting of a series of projecting bays and dormers, makes it one of the more significant houses on the outskirts of Strabane. The extensive setting with open fields stretching down to the river on one side has been partially affected by loss of land once belonging to the house on the Urney Road side and construction of late twentieth-century houses.