26 Carrigans Road, Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone, BT78 4EQ

26 Carrigans Road, Newtownstewart

A detached three-bay single-storey vernacular dwelling built around 1830, located on the east side of Carrigans Road at its corner with Reaghan Road. The building retains much of its original character and detailing and has not been modernised. Although built in 1830, it later displays nineteenth-century character, particularly in its fenestration and interior fittings which appear Victorian in date.

The house follows a direct-entry rectangular plan with a single-storey gabled porch to the north. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles, and yellow brick corbelled chimneys rise from the walls. The walls are roughcast lime rendered with corbelled eaves. Windows are timber-framed six-over-six sliding sashes with exposed sash boxes, all fitted with sandstone sills. The principal elevation faces north, with each of the three bays containing a single window. Bay three contains a window to the left, and the gable is abutted at the right by the gabled porch, which features decorative timber bargeboard and a square-headed vertically-sheeted timber door with a glazed panel.

The south elevation is more complex in arrangement. Bay one contains a small casement window with iron grille. Bay two holds a replacement square-headed vertically-sheeted timber door with an original stone lintel, flanked to the right by a two-over-two sliding sash window. Bay three contains a single two-over-two sliding sash window. Bay four has a large square-headed opening with a vertically-sheeted timber door fitted with a louvred panel. The east and west gables are blank.

The house stands within an enclosed farmyard setting containing a significant range of rubble outbuildings of the same period. To the north the house is overgrown with mature garden vegetation, accessed through a wrought-iron gate to the east and bounded by hedging.

The outbuilding range to the south and east comprises rubble-constructed structures with timber-framed windows and doors surmounted by stone lintels. A two-storey building to the east has a pitched natural slate roof and rubble steps with sandstone treads leading to a loading door at first-floor level. A single-storey L-shaped range to the south-east has a pitched corrugated metal roof (slate to the northern section) and is partially lime rendered and whitened; its southern section has been partially demolished. A rubble boundary wall continues south to a group of three attached single-storey buildings. The left and right buildings have pitched natural slate roofs; the centre building has a corrugated metal roof. Those to the left each contain a large opening. The right (west) building has a central door opening flanked by window openings, suggesting it may originally have served as a dwelling.

Historical records show the house on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, though an extension on the east elevation visible in early records no longer appears on the 1905 map. The outbuildings opposite the south elevation first appear on the 1905 map. The southern section of the L-shaped building dates to 1833, while its northern section is later. Townland Valuation records from around 1820–1840 list a "house and offices" occupied by George Adams, valued at £7 8 shillings. Griffith's Valuation of 1858 records Rebecca Adams as occupier, with the valuation reduced to £4. Valuation Revisions document a change of occupier to Thomas McFarland in 1887, when the valuation increased to £5 10 shillings following the construction of "new offices". These later nineteenth-century improvements may have prompted the refitting of the fenestration and interior to Victorian standards.

The property, shown on Ordnance Survey mapping from 1833 onwards, stands as an important example of vernacular farmstead architecture in rural Northern Ireland, retaining its original farmyard group largely intact.