Cottage, Drumlone, Newtownbutler, Co. Fermanagh, BT92 8BU

A well-proportioned hearth-lobby vernacular house in Drumlone, Newtownbutler, built between 1840 and 1859. This single-storey building with attic space comprises three bays aligned south-west to north-east, retaining good external character of a building type that is becoming increasingly rare.

The house has a half-hipped natural slate roof (partially repaired with fibre cement slates) with brown brick chimneys positioned at the party walls between each bay. The walls are roughcast with stepped stucco quoins and half-round metal rainwater goods. Windows throughout are 8/8 sliding sashes set in narrow painted cement-rendered reveals with painted stone cills.

The principal south-east elevation faces the road and contains four equally spaced openings. The left and right bays each have a window, while the central bay has a window to the left and a timber door to the right. The left gable is abutted by a lower outbuilding with a pitched corrugated metal roof, roughcast to front and rubble stone to rear. The exposed section of the left gable displays a 1/1 sliding sash window at attic level, positioned at the top-right corner to fit with the roof slope.

The left gable itself has a 2x2 metal-framed top-hung casement window. The rear elevation features tongue-and-groove sheeted doors at either end, with the left being larger. The left bay contains a 2/2 horizontally-divided window at centre, while the central bay has a similar window positioned immediately left of a later addition, with 1/1 sliding sashes at attic level to left and right. The right bay shows the remains of a 2x2 fixed-pane window immediately right of the addition.

A single-storey addition stands to the rear right of centre, with a monopitched corrugated asbestos roof. Its rear face has a window opening sheeted with corrugated metal, while its left cheek has a tongue-and-groove sheeted door and right cheek is blank.

The setting includes a small front garden enclosed by a low hedge. To the rear is a farmyard accessed via a pair of cast-iron gates supported on square-section cement-rendered gate piers with pyramidal coping.

Historical records show a building at this location on the 1834 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map. It was not valued in the 1830s Valuation book, indicating it was then a one-storey vernacular structure. By 1862 it was valued at £2 10 shillings, a valuation that remained unchanged through to the 1920s. While this valuation appears low for such a substantial structure, evidence suggests the building took its present form in the mid-nineteenth century.