63 Oldtown Street, Cookstown, BT80 8EE

63 Oldtown Street, Cookstown

This is a terraced two-storey house built around 1830, set within a mixed terrace on Oldtown Street to the north of Cookstown's main commercial district. The building is largely rectangular in plan with a single-storey lean-to open trellis veranda to the front elevation and a further two-storey return adjoining the rear.

The external walls are finished with ruled-and-lined render to the ground floor and dry dash render to the first floor, with smooth render bands to the window edges and a continuous smooth render band at window head level. The pitched roof is covered in artificial slate and has two simple brick chimneys at each end. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC.

The front west elevation facing onto Oldtown Street is three windows in width. The ground floor has 8/8 timber sliding sash windows set on painted cut stone sills. A central square-headed timber-panelled door is partially obscured by the veranda. The open veranda is supported on four painted square timber posts with curved timber brackets to the eaves, and the projecting sides are finished in timber lattice with a lean-to roof of natural slate. The upper level also has 8/8 timber sliding sash frames.

The rear south elevation is largely obscured by returns, with a square-headed timber casement window visible to the first floor. The two-storey return to the right side of the rear has a pitched artificial slate roof, while the single-storey section has a flat roof. The rear elevations contain an assortment of square-headed timber uPVC windows.

The house is set back from Oldtown Street behind a low rendered wall, with a long narrow stepped garden rising towards the building. To the rear is a small yard bounded by a rubble stone wall to the north, with a painted wrought-iron rural gate set within it.

The property appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34, and valuation records from 1834–35 confirm a house on the site then owned by Joseph Smyth (or Smith). The valuers noted the building was "not new" at that time, recording dimensions of 29 feet by 23 feet by 17 feet for the main section, a return of 14½ by 8½ by 5 feet, and outbuildings of 24 by 15½ by 6 feet, 21 by 12½ by 6 feet, and 29 by 13 by 10 feet, the first and last of which were thatched. The rateable value rose from £6–18–1 in 1834–35 to £7–14–0 by 1838. By 1859 Hugh Smith leased the property directly from the Gunning-Moore estate, with the rateable value then given as £13. The property passed through numerous occupants over the following decades: Elizabeth Smith (1863), David Lawn (1878), James Johnston (1880), William Judge (1882), Martha Sheppard (1891), Matilda Whann (1899), Charles McClean (1904), George McCormick (1906), William Nelson (1911), and Robert Gildea (1914). In 1922 the property was sold to Robert Greer, with Annie Greer listed as leasing from him from 1940 until at least 1972. The veranda may have been added during the Edwardian era.