Drapersfield House, 19 Drapersfield, Cookstown, BT80 8RS

Drapersfield House is an early 19th-century house of substantial architectural interest, now in use as a residential home. The building comprises a two-storey, five-bay gabled and rendered main block with a single-storey wing to one side and extensive rear returns. It stands in rural grounds, set well back from the public road, with its main entrance front facing south-east.

The south-east elevation of the main block is symmetrical, with two windows to each side of a central two-storey gabled projection containing the main entrance porch. The walling is smooth cement rendered to the main block with a deep projecting plinth, while the central projection has rough textured render with smooth rendered quoins, a stringcourse and a pedimental feature. The roof is laid in Bangor blue slates in regular courses, containing three modern rooflights, with two chimneys—one to each gable—rendered in smooth render with plain cornices and three octagonal pots to each stack.

Windows throughout the main block are timber vertically hung sashes with 6 over 6 glazing and no horns, except in the single-storey wing where similar sashes are fitted with horns. The main entrance is positioned in the right-hand side of the central projection and comprises a rectangular timber panelled door set in plain reveals.

The south-west elevation presents the blank gable of the main block with the single-storey wing projecting from it. The wing gable contains a rectangular door and a rectangular window of modern construction—a fixed lower light with a top-hung vent, both in small panes—designed to resemble a traditionally sashed window. A projecting chimney breast topped by one modern pot is also present.

The north-west or rear elevation is complex, dominated by the roof of the main front block and a conjoined mass of an original rear return, a modern rear return, and modern infill blocks. The original rear return has a slated roof and blank rendered gable surmounted by a red brick chimney, with a modern rectangular window of fixed light and top-hung vents in its partly exposed right-hand side. Modern single-storey extensions project from this elevation. The modern rear return rises three storeys on its rear yard side with a flat roof, smooth rendered walls, and rectangular windows mostly of large fixed lights with top-hung vents. A steel fire escape stairway serves a second-floor door. The infill block between the returns is flat-roofed with a slate-hung exposed side and top-hung vent lights. Modern single-storey gabled and slated wings project from both old and new returns, containing modern fixed lights and top-hung vents. The gable of the modern rear return is asymmetrical, with a raking roofline to the left rising to a flat-roofed attic storey to the right, with three storeys of window openings containing modern framing types and two ground-floor doorways.

The north-east elevation comprises the two-storey gable of the main front block with a long two-storey rear return extending to the right. The gable is smooth rendered with one window to each floor (sashed with horns), and the return is similarly rendered with a slated pitched roof incorporating modern flush rooflights and rectangular sashed windows.

The building is approached via a driveway through a modern gateway with square rendered piers and iron gates. The driveway is flanked by trees and shrubs and leads to an extensive hard-surfaced car park along the north-east side and a hard-surfaced rear yard. The main entrance is accessed by a flight of concrete flagged steps bounded by low rendered walls with modern railings, with a similarly paved terrace extending across the front. Beyond lies an area of modern landscaping including a modern classical open aedicule as a garden feature, bounded on the south side by a modern rendered wall. The rear yard is subdivided by modern timber fencing with varied ground finishes. The garden to the north-east includes modern landscaping with linked ponds and a modern ironwork bridge and railings. The front boundary consists of modern rendered piers, plinth walls and railings.

Historical evidence suggests a mid-18th-century core survives within the building. Previous mapping shows a house at this location on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832, while the present house (prior to later institutional extensions) appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1906. The building was vacant in 1973 but was refurbished in the early 1980s and extended by an addition to the rear return circa 1992–1995. The listing extent covers the house including the original three-bay return.