19 Molesworth Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8NX

19 Molesworth Street is a substantial three-storey sandstone terraced building dating from around 1850, originally constructed as a police barracks and court house and now in use as a public house. It sits at the end of a long, largely uniform terrace of mixed three-storey buildings running along the south side of Molesworth Street, built in stages between 1850 and 1880 and now largely converted to shops, pubs and offices. Despite numerous minor alterations that have mainly detracted from the historic fabric, the building continues to make a positive contribution to the character and appearance of this part of Cookstown.

The building is long, narrow and rectangular in plan, running back to the south, with a further two-storey return and a single-storey return beyond. A single-storey flat-roofed extension to the west of the two-storey return is a later addition dating from around the 1960s. Beyond this, an adjoining two-storey furniture shop with a single-storey entrance abuts the return; this is a rendered building with a metal-clad curved roof, also from around the 1960s, accessed via a laneway to the west of the main terrace.

External walls throughout are sandstone, with splayed flat brick arches and quoin-style brick surrounds to the window and door openings.

The principal north-facing street elevation at ground floor level is divided into two shopfronts. On the left, a panelled painted timber doorway with an overlight gives access to the first-floor commercial property; a simple bracketed canopy covers the doorway, and a painted timber modern signboard is fixed above it. On the right, the shopfront has a doorway to its left and a modern multi-paned window set over a rendered stall riser to its right. Three painted cut-stone pilasters with painted stone plinths separate the bays. A painted timber signboard over an oversized painted timber fascia surmounts the shopfront, with a projecting timber cornice above. The upper floors are three bays wide, with 1/1 timber sliding sash windows in each bay, each opening again featuring the splayed flat brick arches. The classical proportions of the windows reduce at each successive upper level. A sandstone plinth runs along the base of the front elevation, and a projecting internally illuminated sign is attached at first-floor level.

The west elevation is gable-ended to the left and has the returns to the right, with 1/1 timber sliding sash windows at ground and first floor and a single boarded doorway at ground level. A large extractor fan covers one of the ground-floor windows, and a large modern advertisement billboard partially obscures the first-floor windows. A centrally positioned cut-sandstone chimney stack with projecting stone cornicing and clay chimney pots sits on the ridge line of the west elevation of the main terrace building, which also features projecting stone eaves and verge courses. At first-floor level on the first return, windows have been partially closed up, though the radial flat brick arches and quoin-style brick window surrounds remain intact. Two smaller window openings at first floor are later additions, surrounded by thin render bands. At ground level an 8/8 timber sliding sash window is partially obscured by the 1960s single-storey flat-roofed addition and a projecting glazed canopy added around 2007 as a smoking area. This extension is finished in painted render with a flat corrugated iron roof and contains replacement timber windows and a painted timber door. The second return is lower and similarly finished, with random rubble and sandstone external walls and window surrounds consistent with the rest of the building; it abuts directly onto the rear furniture store. Exposed aluminium rainwater goods are visible on the north and west elevations. The main terrace has a natural slate roof with red ridge tiles running as a single continuous covering across the whole terrace; all pitched roof returns are also finished in natural slate.

Molesworth Street was originally known as Coagh Road and was laid out around 1834, with Cookstown Third Presbyterian Church built towards its south-eastern end in 1835. The street remained little more than a country lane branching from the town's main thoroughfare for the next two decades. The opening of the first of Cookstown's two railway stations at the east end of the street in 1856 acted as the catalyst for rapid commercial development, and over the following thirty years the street became the town's commercial heartland. The south side was marked out as building ground by the Gunning-Moore estate in 1859, and between 1861 and 1880 the present imposing three-storey terrace — with the exception of number 19 itself — was built in stages spreading from west to east. The name Molesworth Street, a reference to Elizabeth Molesworth, wife of the town's former landlord James Stewart of Killymoon, is first recorded in the valuations in 1877.

Number 19 is marked on the Ordnance Survey map of 1857 as Police Barracks and Court House and recorded as such in the valuation of 1859. The police vacated the property in 1862 and moved to what was then 40 William Street (the numbering has since changed). The main front building was then leased to an Anne Allen and given a rateable value of £22, while the return and rear portion continued in use as a court house. Stables were added to the rear in 1868, raising the rateable value to £30. Edward M. Allen took over as leaseholder and tenant around 1898, and from that point the property is recorded as a public licensed house. Following the construction of the new court house in Chapel Street in 1900, Allen acquired the now-former court house to the rear of his existing property and by 1907 had converted it to a billiard room, noted by the valuers as a separate property. In 1909, some offices and a covered yard — presumably all to the rear — are recorded as yet another separate property, also in the hands of Edward M. Allen. William E. Allen is listed as the occupier of all three properties in 1924, succeeded by Thomas Eastwood from 1928 to 1956. By 1972 the whole building had been divided into five properties, including a public house, a bookmaker's, a shop and store at first floor, a club room at first floor, and a hairdressing salon, apparently to the rear.

The building stands in the north-east of Cookstown town centre.