54 Loy Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8PE

54 Loy Street is a modest rendered terraced two-storey former house, built around 1880 on the eastern side of Loy Street, Cookstown. It forms part of a short terrace of similar scale alongside the adjacent properties at numbers 52 and 58, all built together as a single development. The building is rectangular in plan, with a two-storey pitched roof return to the rear.

The front west elevation is set back slightly from the street, with a tarmac parking area open to the pavement where a front garden once stood. At ground floor level, a doorway sits to the left and a square-headed window to the right. The doorway is elliptical-headed, with a panelled timber door flanked by two panelled pilasters set on cut-stone pad stones. Above the door is a carved stone surround with a decorative vermiculated carved keystone, and at springer level there is a projecting carved timber cornice. The ground floor window is square-headed with cut-stone sills and 2/2 timber sash windows. The upper level has two timber sash windows of the same type. The front elevation is finished in plain painted render resting on a shallow rendered plinth, with a carved stone dentilled course at eaves level supporting the eaves course. The rear east elevation presents three storeys, the extra storey created by a split lower level within the building. It carries both timber sash windows and replacement uPVC windows, and is finished in unpainted cement render. The return also has replacement uPVC windows.

The roof is artificial slate. There is a polychromatic brick chimney with a profiled capping to the main roof. Rainwater goods are cast-iron to the front elevation and uPVC to the rear. The building maintains the common building line shared along William Street, James Street, Loy Street and beyond. To the rear is a small yard enclosed by a rubble stone wall, facing onto several outbuildings.

The internal layout has been largely retained, preserving a legible example of the simple Victorian townhouse plan prior to a change of use.

Although quite modest overall, the door surround and dentilled eaves course give the composition a degree of architectural presence. The scale and proportions reflect those of the surrounding street, and the building contributes character and group value alongside its neighbours.

The site is shown as developed on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34. By the time of a valuation modification made around 1838, following the raising of the rateable threshold from £3 to £5, the site was occupied by one of thirty-five houses recorded as exempt — that is, below rateable value. Matching the 1834 building details to the revised plan of around 1838 is made difficult by the fact that the original town plan was scrapped and redrawn at that time with new references. The modest exempt house was still standing in 1859, when a Henry Purvis was recorded as its occupant, the property still being below rateable value. This earlier house stood until 1880, when it and its two neighbours to the north and south were demolished and replaced by the short terrace seen today. The new development appears to have been the work of a James Howard — whose name was initially recorded as James Steward before being corrected, though it is unclear whether this reflects a simple error or a genuine change in the identity of the leaseholder — who acquired the lease of the entire site from the Gunning-Moore estate in 1879.

The first recorded occupant of number 54 was a Daniel Gatens, at a rateable value of £9-10-0. He was succeeded by Robert Dickson in 1882, then John Gilmore in 1885. From 1887 the property appears to have served as a parochial house or curate's residence for the Roman Catholic church opposite, with a succession of clergy recorded as residents: Reverend Peter Kerley in 1887, Reverend John Rock in 1889, and Reverend Owen McEleavy from 1894. Following the construction of a new parochial house on Convent Road in 1907, the church gave up the property and it became the home of a Mrs E.M. Lewis. Subsequent occupants included John W. Manson (1910), James Seawright (1913), George Lawless (1916), Jane Howard (1918), and George Ferguson (1921). In 1922 the lease passed to Dawson McAllister, followed by Arthur Gourley the following year, then Rachel McKinney in 1938. John and George A. Ferguson took on the lease in 1944, with John Ferguson listed as occupier in 1949, freeholder in 1962, and still in occupation in 1972.