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

58 Lindesayville Road is a roughcast terraced one-and-a-half storey former foreman's cottage, built around 1840, forming one of eight matching terraced houses arranged in two blocks on the north side of Lindesayville Road, to the south of Desertcreat, County Tyrone. This cottage sits within the southern block, which was designed to house 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 and a further single-storey lean-to outbuilding beyond. External walls are finished in painted roughcast render. The roof is pitched with natural slate and overhanging eaves. A projecting central front porch sits beneath the overhang. Full dormers rise from the roof, each fitted with small square-headed 1-over-1 timber sash windows and decorative curved timber fascias to the dormer gables. There is a rendered chimney to the south-east with rounded brick chimney spouts. A rooflight serves the rear elevation. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC.

The front south-west elevation faces Lindesayville Road. The projecting entrance porch contains a square-headed timber sheeted door with an integral window, retaining its original painted door knocker, knob, and letterbox. Single square-headed windows sit to each side of the porch, fitted with 2-over-2 timber sliding sash frames set on painted cut-stone sills.

To the rear north-east elevation, there is a single 2-over-2 timber sliding sash window at ground floor level. The rendered two-storey pitched return has replacement uPVC windows set on painted concrete sills, with artificial slate to its roof and replacement uPVC rainwater goods. A timber door serves the south-eastern elevation. The lean-to outbuilding is painted render with one large full-width opening to the south.

The terrace is set back from the road behind a long white-washed stone wall, with individual gate openings to each house. To the rear, a continuous concrete yard is enclosed by a concrete wall to the west and a timber fence with integral gate to the east.

The two rows of cottages were built sometime between around 1835 and around 1857. Architectural historian Alistair Rowan attributes their construction to a Captain Daniell (or Daniel) of nearby Rock Lodge and dates them to around 1840. However, the houses stand on land that formed part of the Loughry estate, and their name "Lindesayville" — which appears on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map — suggests that a member of the Lindesay family of Loughry was responsible for them. This may have been Frederick Lindesay, who lived at Rock Lodge from sometime between 1837 and 1846 until 1848.

By the valuation of 1858, the two rows were recorded as "eight labourers houses, gardens and plantations," rated collectively at £13-15-0. Although the two blocks appear similar from the outside, they were designed differently. The north-western terrace, intended for labourers, was externally arranged as four dwellings but was internally divided so that each building housed two families, each with its own entrance within the shared porch and its own stair. The south-western terrace, by contrast, was as it appeared: four separate houses for four foremen and their families. This cottage is one of those four foremen's dwellings.

Despite this arrangement, when occupants were first recorded by the valuers in 1864, thirteen people in total were listed across the eight dwellings, making clear that at least one of the foremen's cottages 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; and William Allen and Samuel Hannay — each pair sharing a house — 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, Wilson sold the houses to Thomas A. Ekin, a Belfast Bank official of Rathcrogan house on Molesworth Road, Cookstown. After this sale, twelve rather than fourteen occupants are recorded, indicating that the foremen's cottages had by then all returned to 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, the amalgamation of the labourers' cottages in the northern block had begun, with Robert Mullen and Thomas McKernon each taking possession of two properties; one was converted into a shop, remaining so until the 1980s. Two further dwellings in that block continued as double tenancies until the early 1970s, after which amalgamation accelerated, and by 1984 all the former labourers' houses had been combined with consequent internal alterations. In the 1990s, three of those dwellings — originally containing six properties — were amalgamated again into a single house with an integral garage. The four former foremen's houses, including this cottage, have remained as separate properties throughout, although all received extensions at the rear dating from around the 1980s.

The cottages are designed in a picturesque vernacular style and are considered a rare survival as a recognisable building form. Their history and relationship to the Loughry estate, and the record of how they evolved as social circumstances changed over time, are of considerable interest. Well-composed and of modest scale, they contribute variety and interest to their rural setting.