50-54 Lindesayville Road, Tullyhogue, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8UH

Nos. 50–54 Lindesayville Road form part of a terrace of eight matching one-and-a-half storey labourer's cottages built around 1840, arranged in two blocks on the north side of Lindesayville Road, south of Desertcreat, County Tyrone. This entry covers the northern block, comprising the properties formerly recorded individually as Nos. 50, 52, and 54. All three were originally separate dwellings but have since been combined, along with a fourth property, to form a single house. The terrace as a whole is a well-preserved and rare survival of picturesque vernacular estate housing, and the individual cottages share a group value with the adjacent matching terraces.

The three cottages are roughcast rendered throughout, painted, and each follows the same T-shaped plan with a rear return to the north-east. The roofs are pitched and covered in natural slate with overhanging eaves. A projecting central front porch is set within the overhang at the south-west elevation, which faces onto Lindesayville Road. Full dormers rise from the front roof slope, fitted with small square-headed 1-over-1 timber sash windows and finished with decorative curved timber fascias to the dormer gables. No. 54, at the south-eastern end of the block, also has a decorative curved timber fascia to the gable of the main roof. Rooflights are provided to the rear. Each cottage has a rendered chimney to the south-east with rounded brick chimney spouts. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC.

On the front south-west elevation, each cottage has a projecting entrance bay at its centre containing a square-headed timber door, with a single square-headed window to each side of the porch. These windows have 2-over-2 timber sliding sash frames set on painted cut-stone sills.

The rear north-east elevations vary slightly between the three properties. No. 50 has 2-over-2 timber sash windows to the ground floor, while Nos. 52 and 54 have square-headed timber casement windows at ground floor level. No. 54 differs further in having square-headed garage doors with painted timber doors at ground floor level to its rear north-east elevation. The rendered rear returns to all three cottages contain windows — Nos. 52 and 54 have timber casement windows, while No. 50's rear return contains the entrance porch and also has timber casement windows. No. 50 has a timber door to the north-western elevation, No. 52 has a timber door to the south-eastern elevation, and No. 54 has a timber door to the north-western elevation. The south-east gable elevation of No. 54 has two square-headed windows with 1-over-1 timber sash frames.

The terrace is set back from Lindesayville Road behind a long whitewashed stone wall, with individual gate openings to each house. There is a continuous concrete yard to the rear of the northern block and a tarmac access drive to the north.

The 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. This may have been Frederick Lindesay, who lived at Rock Lodge between around 1837–1846 and 1848. By the time of the 1858 valuation, 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. Although externally it presented as four dwellings, each was originally subdivided internally between two families, with each half containing its own entrance within the shared porch and its own stair. The southern block, by contrast, contained four houses intended for foremen and their families — one property per household. Despite this arrangement, when occupants were first recorded by the valuers in 1864 there were thirteen residents 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; William Allen and Samuel Hannay (each pair sharing a house); and Peggy Browne, John McKane, and William McIntire, each occupying an individual dwelling.

In 1896 the Loughry estate, including Lindesayville, was acquired by Cookstown businessman James Wilson Fleming. In 1908 he sold the houses to Thomas A. Ekin, a Belfast Bank official residing at Rathcrogan house on Molesworth Road, Cookstown. By this point twelve rather than fourteen occupants were recorded, indicating that the foremen's cottages had all become single tenancies. The 1913 residents are 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 amalgamation of the labourers' cottages had begun: both Robert Mullen and Thomas McKernon each held two properties, one of which was converted to a shop and remained in that use until the 1980s. The remaining two dwellings continued as double tenancies until the early 1970s, after which the process of amalgamation accelerated. By 1984 all of the former labourers' houses had been combined with consequent internal alterations. In the 1990s three of these dwellings — which had originally contained six separate properties — were further amalgamated to form a single house with an integral garage. The former foremen's houses in the southern block have remained four separate properties, though all have rear extensions dating from around the 1980s.