45 Molesworth Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8NX

45 Molesworth Street is a three-storey former terraced house built around 1878, constructed in ashlar sandstone and located at the north-east end of Cookstown town centre. The ground floor is now in use as a shop. The building forms part of a long, broadly uniform row of mixed three-storey buildings running from nos. 19 to 53 Molesworth Street, built in stages between approximately 1850 and 1880 and now largely converted to shops, public houses and offices. Despite being constructed over a thirty-year period and in several distinct phases, the terrace has maintained a remarkable uniformity of character. The building is rectangular in plan, with a two-storey lean-to roofed return to the left of the rear elevation and a two-storey pitched return to the right, both backing onto a rear service yard. The property is privately owned.

The north-facing front elevation is largely unchanged from its original form. The external walls are original ashlar sandstone throughout, with banded rusticated sandstone quoins to the front elevation. At ground floor level, the frontage is divided between a shopfront to the west and a panelled doorway to the east. The doorway has an overlight, is surmounted by a carved stone lintel, and is framed by splayed rusticated quoins to the door surround. The shopfront is positioned slightly off-centre and comprises a glazed and panelled timber doorway with an overlight, flanked to the left by a large double-light shop window and to the right by a single-light window. Both windows are set on rendered stall risers. Panelled pilasters run to each side of the shopfront, surmounted by decorative carved floral scrolled console brackets, a carved timber cornice, and a painted timber signboard. The upper floors contain one-over-one timber sliding sash windows with carved chamfered stone surrounds and painted cut stone sills. The classical proportions of the window openings reduce progressively towards the upper levels. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods are retained to the north elevation.

The west gable elevation is blank, with a centrally positioned painted and rendered profiled chimney set to the ridge line of the main terrace building. The side of the rear return is visible to the right of this elevation. That return has a square-headed timber light window and a glazed and panelled door positioned together to resemble a shopfront, fitted with a security grille and surmounted by a metal signboard grid structure with external projecting lights. A brick chimney with clay pots is located at the centre of the return at roof level.

The rear south elevation is rendered and contains two-over-two timber sliding sash windows with metal grilles visible at upper level. A painted and rendered chimney rises from the roof, which is finished in natural slate. Replacement aluminium rainwater goods are fitted to this elevation.

To the west rear return, the south elevation features a central semi-circular headed archway with wrought-iron gates, a single square-headed timber sash window to the left, and a casement window to the right. The lean-to roof slopes upward from east to west, finished in slate, with a simple brick chimney. The east pitched roof return contains two-over-two timber sliding sash windows.

The rear service yard is enclosed by a random rubble stone boundary wall at ground level, above which a corrugated iron boundary surround extends upward beyond first-floor height.

The building was constructed in 1878 on a plot acquired by a John McIlhatton, and its matching neighbour to the east — the present nos. 47–49 — was built at the same time on the same plot. When the two are viewed together, they form a single symmetrical composition, with the adjacent coach arch positioned at the centre. No. 45 was originally occupied by an Arthur McIlhatton, with an original rateable value of £34 15s 0d. A Thomas Douglas took up the tenancy in 1881, followed by John Quinn in 1882. Robert Dickson is recorded as tenant from 1883 and acquired the lease himself in 1890. He appears to have died in 1899, after which the property remained in the hands of his representatives until 1914, when a Margaret Dickson is recorded as leaseholder and occupant.

In 1954 the building was divided into three properties: the ground floor shop was run by Herbert and Harriett Devlin; the first floor and ground floor were occupied by Cyrus and Irene Brown, who had acquired the lease of the whole building; and a further first-floor office was in the hands of the Northern Ireland Ministry of Home Affairs. The building is recorded as vacant from 1960 and remained so, according to the valuation books, until at least 1972.

The building is of architectural interest for its style, proportion, ornamentation, and group value. It forms part of a group with the adjacent nos. 47 and 49, and also contributes to the wider group of listed buildings along Molesworth Street. Its presence in this location is indicative of the urbanisation and increasing prosperity of Cookstown during the Victorian era, a process driven in large part by the arrival of the railways.