House, Botera Upper Road, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT78 5DG

A detached three-bay two-storey house built around 1900, located north of Botera Upper Road. The house was originally a direct-entry dwelling with a stair-hall partition added later. It remains largely unchanged in form and layout, with main elements still evident including window frames, stonework and hearth.

The building is rectangular in plan with a single-storey wind-break porch to the east and a single-storey gabled extension to the west, added around 1920. The pitched roof of natural slate (now removed) sits over timber rafters and purlins, with smooth rendered corbelled chimneys. Walls are constructed of rubble with ruled-and-lined render (partially fallen away) and lime-render to the east.

The principal elevation faces east, consisting of a central wind-break porch with missing door, flanked by single windows on each side, with three windows at first-floor level. Windows are timber-framed 6/6 sliding sash to the principal elevation and 1/1 sliding sash elsewhere, currently in poor repair, with sandstone sills. The south gable is blank and abutted at ground floor by a concrete block lean-to shelter. The west elevation is abutted at ground-floor centre by the gabled extension; the exposed section at ground-floor left contains a door and window opening, with a single window to the right; two windows occupy the first floor. The extension has a single window to the west and a door opening to the north. The north gable is blank.

The house is set in a farmyard partially bounded to north and east by rubble boundary walling. A two-storey rubble outbuilding stands to the north in partially collapsed condition, with a pitched roof of exposed timbers (slates removed) and timber-framed openings to each floor; a single-storey rubble lean-to with corrugated metal roof abuts it to the west. Further remains of a single-storey stable block lie to the west, largely ruined.

The house first appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1906. However, a building shown on the same plot on the first edition map of 1833 appears to have survived as an outbuilding to the north of the main house. An extension to the rear appears on the fourth edition map of 1936–8. Griffith's Valuation records a previous house on the plot occupied by Michael Quinn and valued at 5 shillings, with notes indicating Alex McKinley as occupier leasing from Charles S Buchanan. In 1881 the owner became John Smith; in 1892 the plot value was reduced to 12 shillings. By 1912 the value had risen to £4, indicating construction of the new house in the preceding years.

Along with its outbuildings, which pre-date the house itself, the property forms a group of some local interest. However, it is of a common type and late date, and not one of the best examples of a traditional rural dwelling. Its interest has been compromised further by extensive loss of fabric.