34a and 34b Oldtown Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8EF

34a and 34b Oldtown Street is a terraced two-and-a-half-storey house with a single-storey basement, built around 1870. It was considered a well-composed example of a modest Victorian town house that adds interest to the streetscape, but it survives as a façade only, with insufficient historic fabric remaining to merit listing.

The building is roughly rectangular in plan, with a three-storey lean-to return to the rear. External walls are of dressed, regular-coursed sandstone, with render to the basement. The rear elevation is unpainted dry-dash render. The roof is covered in artificial slate with cast-iron rainwater goods, and there is a brick chimney with a profiled stepped capping to the south.

The front elevation faces east onto Oldtown Street. At ground floor level there is a recessed, segmental-headed doorway to the right, fitted with a glazed timber door and an overlight above it. To the left of the ground floor is a square-headed window with 6-over-6 timber casement frames. The upper floors repeat the same 6-over-6 window arrangement with matching dressings. All windows have cut-stone sills and timber lintel insets. Concrete steps lead down to basement level and are flanked by painted wrought-iron railings. The basement has a timber casement window to the left. A continuous stone plinth runs at sill level across the front. Below the main entrance to the right, at basement level, there is a square-headed doorway with a glazed timber door.

The rear elevation features an assortment of timber casement windows and a door visible at second-floor level, with the lower floors largely obscured by the return. A metal fire escape staircase connects the ground and upper floors at the rear.

The three-storey lean-to return to the rear west has an assortment of square-headed timber casement windows and a slate roof. Much of the return is obscured by the metal fire escape stair.

The building is set back from Oldtown Street behind a low rendered wall with cast-iron railings.

The site has a well-documented history. The Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34 shows this plot and its two neighbouring properties already developed. The first valuation of 1835 records the site as occupied by three old thatched dwellings of varying sizes: a single-storey house to the north, a two-storey house of similar footprint in the centre, and a larger two-storey house to the south. These were occupied respectively by Hugh Mullen, Thomas Bell, and Robert Dunseith, with the northernmost house exempt from valuation on account of its modest size. All three dwellings were still standing at the time of the 1859 valuation, by which point Thomas Bell remained in the middle building, Mary Ridell occupied the northern house, and Joseph Ferguson the southern one, all three held under immediate lessor William Paul. In 1870, Mr Paul demolished all three houses and replaced them with the buildings that stand today.

This particular house was first occupied by a William Coombes, followed by John O'Neill in 1872, McNamee and Lowry in 1874, and Frederick P. McNamee in 1875. In 1878 Thomas Paul — identified in contemporary directories as a yarn merchant — became leaseholder, with Thomas McCormick taking the tenancy in 1881 and John Elder in 1884. The following year, John Wilson Fleming, a rising local businessman and later owner of the Loughry estate, took over the lease. He was succeeded in 1908 by Miss Mary L. Harris, who later appears to have married and become Mary L. Lewis. Subsequent tenants included Edward Smith in 1912, John Forsythe in 1913, Robert Donnelly in 1914, Donald Crawford in 1915, James A. Donaghy in 1918, and the leaseholder Mary L. Lewis herself in 1921. By 1936 a Rachel Browne is recorded as tenant, with Robert Coulter as immediate lessor. Browne was succeeded by Alexander McCullough in 1938 and Eleanor McCullough in 1949. That same year the lease passed to Daniel Coulter, though it was in the hands of Robert Coulter by 1956. McCullough and Coulter are listed as occupant and leaseholder respectively up to at least 1972.