48/50 William Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8NB

48/50 William Street, Cookstown, County Tyrone

This is an elaborate and rare example of a late-Victorian townhouse and butcher's shop, built around 1897. It is a terraced building of three and a half storeys, rectangular in plan, with a two and a half storey return to the rear. The upper level of the return now contains a beauty salon. A further single-storey flat-roofed extension stretches back to the east. External walls are of brick and render. The building forms part of a long row of mixed terrace buildings along William Street, facing west onto that street, within the commercial centre of Cookstown. The mixed terrace comprises mainly Victorian buildings ranging in age from early to late 19th century.

The front elevation is lively with contrasting plasterwork and brick detailing. The ground floor has a shopfront with the house doorway to the left and a shop window and door to the right. Three plain rusticated rendered pilasters, set on painted cut-stone padstones, define the composition. Decorative carved corbel brackets support a stylised pediment above the door, and a cornice runs above the shopfront. The corbel brackets are heavily eroded but may represent a ram to the left, an ox to the centre, and a pig to the right. Recessed panels at the top of each pilaster contain relief carvings of doves in flight, and the pilasters are surmounted by carved finials. The main house door is square-headed with circular pilasters to the door architrave, which support a segmental-headed overlight set within a carved stone surround.

The shopfront has a single-light aluminium window set on a polished granite stall riser and dates from the mid-20th century. There is an integral aluminium door to the right with an overlight. The shopfront is surmounted by a three-light stained glass window. Above this is a carved stone frieze bearing the lettering "J. MAC MAHON", itself surmounted by a projecting carved stone cornice. A retractable sun screen or blind sits immediately over the shop window and door, and there appears to be an original integral sun screen or blind at the top of the aluminium shopfront.

The upper floors have segmental-headed windows with 1-over-1 timber sash frames and carved stone surrounds with moulded keystones at the centre of each window, depicting what appear to be animal faces. Projecting carved stone string courses run at window sill level, springer level, and again at half-window level. The string course at first-floor half-window level is in a shingle-like moulding. The string course at first-floor springer level has projecting roundels with carved reliefs at the centre of each bay. The upper levels are built in Flemish bond brick with rendered quoins to the edges. The eaves are projecting, and cast iron ogee guttering rests on a carved dentilled stone course. The roof is pitched and covered with artificial slate. There are brick chimneys with profiled capping and clay pots.

The rear east elevation is gable-ended with plain render. The south side elevation abuts an archway at ground-floor level. The main two and a half storey return contains an assortment of 1-over-1 timber sash windows and has a dormer to the south side, with a pitched artificial slate roof. The single-storey extension has high-level openings and large extract ducts to the sides.

Inside the butcher's shop there are increasingly rare pictorial representations in glazed tiles, which are of particular importance.

The building has a well-documented history traceable through valuation records. The site may have been occupied in the 1834–35 valuation by a house belonging to a Joseph Greer, though this is uncertain. By the 1859 valuation a house on this site was occupied by a John Quinn, with John Harbison as immediate lessor and a rateable value of £13. By 1882 or 1888 the rateable value had risen to £23, apparently owing to the addition of a store to the rear, with a John McCormack recorded as occupant in 1888. In 1895 a Joseph McMahon became the leaseholder, and by 1897 he had rebuilt the property entirely. After that date it is recorded in valuation records as a "house, shop, store, yard and garden" with a rateable value of £49. The valuers' office notebook records that the newly-built property contained a shop, back room, and kitchen at ground-floor level; two sitting rooms at first-floor level with two bedrooms in the return; two bedrooms at second-floor level with a servant's room in the return; and a single room at attic level. McMahon acquired the freehold of the property from the Earl of Castlestuart in 1912. The building remained in the MacMahon family's hands as late as 1972.