8 Main Street, Drumquin, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT78 4SB

8 Main Street, Drumquin

A mid-terrace stone house of three storeys over a basement with an attic-storey, built around 1830. The building stands on the east side of Main Street and is the tallest structure in the village.

The house is rectangular on plan and faces southwest. It has a pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles and a pair of large stone chimneystacks rising from either gable end with cement coping. The front elevation is of coursed and snecked squared sandstone with tooled ashlar quoins and a string course above basement level. There are three bays across three storeys over the sunken basement. The basement area is enclosed to the street by replacement steel railings and paved in concrete slab. A raised front footpath with stone steps leads to a concrete paved platform bridging the basement. The central square-headed door opening has a smooth rendered surround with a pair of stone plinth blocks and a replacement timber panelled and glazed door with a rectangular overlight. The window openings are square-headed with ashlar surrounds, stone sills, and uPVC windows throughout.

The north gable is abutted by the roof of the neighbouring building, providing roofed access to the rear. The rear elevation has five bays across four storeys and is abutted by a lean-to single-storey stone-built extension over the basement, built around 2000. The rear walling is of coursed rubble stone with square-headed window openings having stone lintels (some replaced in concrete), redbrick reveals, stone sills, and uPVC windows. The south gable is abutted by an adjoining twentieth-century two-storey building with a single small window opening to the attic-storey.

Replacement metal rainwater goods are mounted on steel brackets to the stone-lined eaves. A range of rubble stone outbuildings are situated to the north and south perimeters of the rear site, with a cobbled rear yard containing a two-storey rubble stone outbuilding to the north with a pitched corrugated iron roof and large sheeted steel doors, and a further single-storey outbuilding to the south with a pitched natural slate roof and whitewashed rubble stone walls.

Historical Background

Buildings are shown on the site from the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, though the house is not clearly identifiable in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40. It may correspond to a 'house and offices' occupied by Alexander Brady and valued at £7 14s 6d. The house is clearly identified for the first time in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, where it appears as occupied by Hamilton Bradley, leased from William Stewart, comprising a house, offices, yard and garden valued at £19 10s. A small extension is shown to the rear on the valuation map.

Annual Revision records reveal that the adjacent building to the north is the Charitable Loan Fund Office (deleted in 1912), also occupied by Hamilton Bradley. Jane Bradley becomes the occupier of both buildings in 1879. Dr P Campbell is recorded as the owner in fee of the house in 1921. Post-1934, Dr Campbell leases the house from Mrs J Stewart. At that time it comprises a kitchen, scullery, three rooms, a surgery, seven bedrooms, a bathroom and WC. The valuer's notes from the 1930s–1950s period record: "House damp and several rooms unused. Only a doctor is likely to require such a house. Water hand-pumped to roof cistern. Cellar not used."

The house has undergone alterations that have compromised its character and it is not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.