19 Merchantstown Road, Omagh, Co Tyrone, BT79 0LL

A detached four-bay two-storey house built around 1900, located on the south side of Merchantstown Road in a secluded rural setting. The house is rectangular in plan and faces north-east.

The external walls are lime-rendered over English Garden Wall bonded red brick. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles, carried on brick corbelled eaves. Lime-rendered brick chimneys are positioned at the ridge. The south-east gable contains an exposed brick chimney flue to the centre.

Windows throughout are timber-framed six-over-six sliding sashes with square heads, positioned in smooth rendered reveals with sandstone sills. Those on the first floor are diminished in size. The south-west (rear) elevation contains five equally-spaced four-over-four sliding sash windows at each floor, with those to the first floor being camber-headed. The north-west gable is blank.

The principal north-east elevation contains an opening on each floor in each bay. A double-leaf vertically-sheeted timber entrance door with bronze knocker and geometric transom light is located at the second bay from the left. The south-east gable has a vertically-sheeted timber door at ground floor right with evidence of a pitched canopy over it.

Rainwater goods are cast-iron. The house retains much of its original detailing and appears to have remained largely unaltered with its plan form intact.

The building sits in a rural site surrounded by mature trees and now largely overgrown gardens. An enclosed yard lies to the east, bounded by rubble walling and accessed through a metal gate. The site is bounded on all other sides by rubble walling surmounted by wire fencing.

Historical records show a house existed on the site in the 1833 Ordnance Survey map, but the current building does not appear until the 1906 edition, when it was eventually captioned 'Mount View' on the 1935 map. Griffith's Valuation of 1858 lists a house, offices and land on the site occupied by James Hamilton and leased from James C. Lowry, valued at £4, with a note describing it as a 'good new slated house'. The occupier changed to Edward Hamilton by 1897, with a marginal note recording 'new house in progress in 1899', noted as 'unfinished' in 1903. After 1933 the property value was raised to £8 shillings and sixpence, including outbuildings, comprising three bedrooms, two rooms and a kitchen. The house was constructed of rubble masonry and slate with a porch made entirely of corrugated iron. In 1941 Edward Hamilton sold the house to P. Conway for £1,000.