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

60 Lindesayville Road is a one-and-a-half storey terraced former foreman's cottage, built in a picturesque vernacular style around 1840, and forming part of a group of eight matching terraced houses arranged in two blocks on the north side of Lindesayville Road, to the south of Desertcreat, County Tyrone. This particular house sits within the southern block, which was originally designed to provide four separate dwellings for estate foremen and their families. It shares a group value with the adjacent matching terraces.

The building is rectangular in plan, with a two-storey pitched return to the rear north-east. 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 overhang of the eaves. Full dormers rise from the roofline, each fitted with small square-headed 1/1 timber sash windows. Decorative curved timber fascias adorn all gable ends. A rendered chimneystack base sits to the south-east, topped with rounded brick chimneystacks and pots. There is a rooflight to the rear elevation. The front section of the roof appears to have been originally constructed without guttering; short sections of uPVC guttering have since been added over each doorway. Rear rainwater goods are replacement aluminium.

The front south-west elevation, which faces onto Lindesayville Road, features the projecting entrance porch with a square-headed timber door. Single square-headed windows sit to each side of the porch, with 2/2 timber sliding sash frames set on painted cut-stone sills. The rear north-east elevation has 1/1 timber sash windows at ground floor level. The rendered two-storey pitched return has timber windows set on painted concrete sills in the gable. A timber door provides access from the south-eastern elevation, which also has natural slate roofing and replacement uPVC rainwater goods.

The terrace is set back from the road behind a long whitewashed stone wall, with individual gate openings serving each house. There is a yard to the rear of the property.

The two rows of cottages were built sometime between around 1835 and 1857. Architectural historian Alistair Rowan attributed their construction to a Captain Daniell (or Daniel) of nearby Rock Lodge, dating them to 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 — strongly 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 between some point in the period 1837 to 1846 and 1848.

The two rows served different purposes from the outset. The north-western terrace was intended for labourers, and although it appeared externally to contain four dwellings, each was actually divided internally between two families, with each half having its own entrance within the shared porch and its own stair. The south-western terrace — of which this house forms a part — was laid out as four separate dwellings for foremen and their families. By the 1858 valuation, the entire group was recorded as "eight labourers' houses, gardens and plantations", rated collectively at £13-15-0.

When residents were first noted by valuers in 1864, thirteen people were recorded in total, indicating that at least one of the foremen's dwellings was also being shared at that time. The named residents in 1864 were: Robert Cowan and Edward Quinn; Isabella Montague and Nancy Miller; Jonathan Browne and James McNeigh; Samuel Ferguson and Rose Cowan; William Allen and Samuel Hannay — each pair sharing a house — along with Peggy Browne, John McKane, and William McIntire, each occupying 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 who resided at Rathcrogan House on Molesworth Road, Cookstown. Following this sale, records show twelve rather than fourteen occupants, indicating that the foremen's cottages had by then reverted to single tenancies. The residents listed in 1913 were 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, amalgamation of the labourers' cottages in the northern block had begun, with Robert Mullen and Thomas McKernon each taking possession of two properties. One of these was converted into a shop, which remained in commercial use until the 1980s. Two further dwellings continued as double tenancies until the early 1970s, after which the process of amalgamation accelerated significantly. By 1984 all of the former labourers' houses had been amalgamated with consequent internal alterations. In the 1990s, three of these dwellings — originally comprising six properties — were amalgamated again to form a single house with an integral garage.

The former foremen's houses, of which this is one, have remained as four separate properties throughout, though all received rear extensions dating from around the 1980s.