32a and 32b Oldtown Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8EF

32a and 32b Oldtown Street is a terraced two-and-a-half-storey house with a single-storey basement, built around 1870. It was once a well-composed example of a modest Victorian town house, and while the terrace contributes interest to the streetscape, it survives as a façade only, with insufficient historic fabric remaining to merit listing.

The building is roughly rectangular in plan. To the rear west there is a three-storey pitched extension, a further two-storey extension, and an attached two-storey outbuilding. The external walls are of hammer-dressed, regular-coursed sandstone, with render to the basement. The rear elevation is finished in unpainted dry-dash render. Roofs are covered in artificial slate, with cast-iron rainwater goods. There is a brick chimney with a profiled stepped capping to the south.

The front east elevation faces onto Oldtown Street. At ground floor level, a recessed segmental-headed doorway sits to the right, fitted with a timber-and-glazed door and an overlight. To the left of the ground floor is a square-headed window with 9/9 timber casement frames. The ground-floor openings have simple rolled mouldings to their heads. At the upper levels the windows are 6/9 casements with the same dressings. All windows have cut-stone sills. Concrete steps with painted wrought-iron railings lead down to basement level, where a timber casement window sits to the left. There is a continuous stone plinth at sill level. Below the main entrance to the right is a square-headed doorway fitted with a glazed and timber door. At the rear, an assortment of timber casement windows and a door are visible at second-floor level, with all lower floors obscured by the rear returns. A metal fire-escape staircase connects the ground and upper floors. The side elevation, where exposed, is rendered.

The three-storey pitched rear extension has square-headed timber casement windows to the south side. The two-storey rendered extension has no openings. All roofs are covered in artificial slate. The two-storey stone and rendered outbuilding has two irregularly placed window openings to its south side elevation, fitted with security grills, an artificial slate roof, and uPVC rainwater goods.

The building is set back from Oldtown Street on a rising slope, behind a low rendered wall with cast-iron railings. The street largely comprises a mixture of two-storey and three-storey Victorian buildings.

The site is shown as developed on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34. In the first valuation of 1835, the plot was recorded as containing three old thatched dwellings of differing 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 continued to occupy the middle building, Mary Ridell had taken the northern house, and Joseph Ferguson the southern, with a William Paul recorded as the immediate lessor of all three. In 1870, Paul demolished all three houses and replaced them with the buildings seen today.

This particular dwelling was first occupied by an Andrew Johnston, followed by Sarah A. Ferlie in 1884. By that point, Thomas Paul — identified in contemporary directories as a yarn merchant — had become leaseholder. He remained so until 1885, when the lease passed to James Wilson Fleming, a rising local businessman who subsequently purchased the Loughry estate. Later occupants included William Hayes (1889), William Knipe (1897), Thomas O'Connell (1898), James Little (1904), and Leopold Rozenfield (1906). In 1908, the lease of this property and its two matching neighbours to the north was taken over by Miss Mary L. Harris, who later appears to have married and become Mary L. Lewis. Subsequent tenants were William McCammond (1910), William J. Anderson (1911), Samuel Metcalfe (1913), Robert Greer (1917), William Gough (1921), David Russell (1924), and Hugh Marks (1928). By 1936 Alexander Arnold was occupying the house, with James Coulter as immediate lessor. Arnold was succeeded by William Scott in 1938, and by John Coulter in 1955, with the lease passing to Daniel Coulter in the same year. Samuel Jameson is recorded as tenant around 1962, and Robert McIlvogue from 1966, remaining there until at least 1972.