48 Lindesayville Road, Tullyhogue, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8UH

48 Lindesayville Road is a well-preserved, roughcast, end-of-terrace one-and-a-half storey labourer's cottage, built around 1840, forming part of a group of eight matching terraced houses laid out in two blocks on the north side of Lindesayville Road, to the south of Desertcreat, County Tyrone. The cottage shares a group value with the adjacent matching terraces. The houses are designed in a picturesque vernacular style and are a rare survival as a recognisable form. They are well-composed, of modest scale, and add much variety and interest to their rural setting.

The building is T-shaped in plan with a rear return, and was formerly divided into two separate properties but is now used as a single dwelling. A further single-storey garage has been added to the rear. The house sits in the northern of the two blocks.

External walls are finished in painted roughcast render. The roof is pitched, covered in natural slate, with overhanging eaves. A projecting central front porch is set within the eaves overhang. Full dormers rise from the roof, each fitted with small square-headed 1-over-1 timber sash windows. Decorative curved timber fascias are applied to the dormer gables and to the gable of the main roof. There is a rooflight to the rear elevation. A rendered chimney stack sits to the southeast, with rounded brick chimney pots. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC.

The principal southwest elevation faces onto Lindesayville Road. A projecting entrance bay at the centre contains a square-headed timber door, with single square-headed windows to either side of the porch. These windows have 2-over-2 timber sliding sash frames set on painted cut-stone sills. The northwest gable elevation has square-headed window openings at upper level with diagonal margin panes. The rear northeast elevation has timber casement windows at ground floor level. The rendered rear return is also fitted with timber casement windows. A timber door sits in the northwest-facing return elevation.

The single-storey garage is rendered with a stepped wall profile. A single-storey lean-to shed is of whitewashed brick construction, with two square-headed timber doors and timber windows.

In terms of setting, the terrace is set back from the road behind a long whitewashed stone wall, with individual gate openings to each house. A continuous concrete yard runs to the rear of the northern block. A tarmac access drive serves from the north. A small rubble stone well sits opposite the cottage to the southwest. To the rear there is a small brick outbuilding which, according to the owner, was originally a dry closet.

The two rows of cottages were built sometime between around 1835 and 1857. The architectural historian Alistair Rowan records that they were constructed by a Captain Daniell (or Daniel) of nearby Rock Lodge and estimated their date as around 1840. However, the houses stand on land that formed part of the Loughry estate, and the name Lindesayville — which appears on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map — suggests that a member of the Lindesay family of Loughry was responsible for their construction. This may have been Frederick Lindesay, who lived at Rock Lodge from sometime between 1837 and 1846 until 1848.

By the valuation of 1858, the two rows were recorded as "eight labourers' houses, gardens and plantations," rated collectively at £13 15s 0d. The northern block was designed for labourers and, although it appears externally to contain four dwellings, each was in fact internally divided between two families. Each half contained its own entrance within the shared porch and its own stair. The southwestern terrace, by contrast, was as it appeared — four houses for four foremen and their families. When first recorded by the valuers in 1864, thirteen occupants were noted in total, indicating that one of the foremen's dwellings was also being shared. The 1864 residents were recorded as: Robert Cowan and Edward Quinn; Isabella Montague and Nancy Miller; Jonathan Browne and James McNeigh; Samuel Ferguson and Rose Cowan; and William Allen and Samuel Hannay — each pair occupying one house — with Peggy Browne, John McKane, and William McIntire each residing in individual dwellings.

In 1896, the Loughry estate, including Lindesayville, was acquired by Cookstown businessman James Wilson Fleming. In 1908, Fleming sold the houses to Thomas A. Ekin, a Belfast Bank official of Rathcrogan House, Molesworth Road, Cookstown. From this point, twelve rather than fourteen occupants are recorded, indicating that the foremen's cottages had all become single tenancies. By 1913 the residents were listed as Robert McKane, Samuel McKane, Robert Browne, Robert Mullan, Samuel McMenemy, William J. Campbell, James Hogshead, Thomas Williamson, Jonathan Taylor, Robert Wylie, Henry Douglas, and Samuel Stranaghan.

By 1935, the amalgamation of the labourer's cottages had begun, with both Robert Mullen and Thomas McKernon each taking possession of two properties; one was converted to a shop, which remained in that use until the 1990s. Two other dwellings continued as double tenancies into the early 1970s, after which the process of amalgamation accelerated, and by 1984 all the former labourer's houses had been combined internally. In the 1990s, three of these dwellings — which had originally comprised six separate properties — were amalgamated into a single house with an integral garage. The former foremen's houses have remained as four separate properties, though all received rear extensions around the 1980s.