Derryloran Parish Hall, Loy Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone

Derryloran Parish Hall, Loy Street, Cookstown

This is a single storey rendered and roughcast building of T-plan shape in classical style, originally built in 1835 as a Presbyterian Meeting House. It consists of a modest gabled hall with a lateral rectangular block running north to south, to which a classical front façade with a central projecting entrance bay was added sometime after 1857. The building stands on the main street of the town, set back from it within its own grounds, and later became the church hall for Derryloran Church of Ireland Parish.

The main entrance faces east and consists of a long lateral hall-type building with a half-hipped roof set back behind a deep projecting central entrance block with a hipped roof. The walls are smooth cement rendered, lined and blocked, with a projecting plinth, projecting sandstone cornice surmounted by a plain rusticated blocking course, and rusticated sandstone quoins and dressings to openings. The roofs are of Bangor blue slates in regular courses.

The main doorway contains a pair of rectangular timber panelled doors surmounted by a panelled screen, set in rusticated block sandstone surrounds including a keystone cut from one block to give the appearance of five voussoirs. The doorway is reached by a flight of six concrete flagged steps with modern timber handrails. There is one window in the front wall of the lateral block to each side of the central entrance bay projection, and two windows in each side wall of the entrance block. All are rectangular timber vertically hung sliding sashes nine over nine with horns, except for the two nearest the front of the entrance bay which are very narrow three over three sashes with margin lights. Cills are of tooled sandstone; the one to the right in the lateral block has been chiselled down in girth for half its length, producing an unusual appearance. Rainwater goods to the east elevation are modern aluminium with circular downpipes and plain hoppers; the gutters are concealed.

The side or end elevations of the lateral block are very plain in appearance, with roughcast rendered walls, two sashed windows each set in plain reveals, and similar downpipes to the main front with half-round guttering. The rear or west elevation of the lateral block is similarly rendered and contains one sashed window and a similar downpipe with moulded guttering. Projecting to the west from the rear elevation and flush with the south wall of the main block is a long single storey modern extension of 1982, gabled and slated with roughcast walls but modern largely fixed light windows.

The entire grounds have been laid with tarmac. The boundary to the front street is marked by a modern rubble stone wall and modern iron railings. To the rear, standing within its own grassed garden, is the rectory reached by a driveway opening off the grounds of this building.

The main hall was refurbished in 1989. While later alterations and additions have detracted from the external appearance to the rear and from the character inside, the main exterior elevation forms an architecturally impressive feature in the main street of the town. The building stands as a work of considerable local interest and social value as well as formal architectural impressiveness, representing an interesting historical development through its change in function from Presbyterian meeting house to Church of Ireland parochial hall.