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

56 Lindesayville Road is a well-preserved, roughcast end-of-terrace one-and-a-half storey former foreman's cottage, built around 1840, forming part of a group of eight matching terraced cottages laid out in two blocks on the north side of Lindesayville Road, to the south of Desertcreat, County Tyrone. It is a rare and recognisable survival of a small picturesque mid-19th-century labourer's cottage in the vernacular style, and 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. External walls are finished in painted roughcast render. The roof is pitched with natural slate and overhanging eaves. A projecting central front porch sits within the overhang of the roofline. Full dormers rise from the roof, each fitted with small square-headed 1/1 timber sash windows. Decorative curved timber fascias are present to all gable ends. A rendered chimney sits to the south-east with rounded brick chimney pots, and there is a rooflight to the rear elevation. Rainwater goods are replacement aluminium.

The front south-west elevation, which faces onto Lindesayville Road, features the projecting entrance porch with a square-headed timber door, and single square-headed windows to either side of the porch. These windows have 2/2 timber sliding sash frames set on painted cut-stone sills. The gable north-west elevation has square-headed 1/1 timber sash windows at upper level. The rear north-east elevation has 1/1 timber sash windows to the ground floor. The rendered two-storey pitched roof return at the rear has replacement timber windows set on painted concrete sills, artificial slate to its roof, and replacement uPVC rainwater goods. There is a timber door to the south-eastern elevation.

The terrace is set back from the road behind a long whitewashed stone wall, with individual gate openings to each house. To the rear there is a yard with paving enclosed by a timber boundary fence.

The two rows of cottages were built sometime between around 1835 and 1857. Architectural historian Alistair Rowan attributed their construction to a Captain Daniell (or Daniel) of nearby Rock Lodge, and judged them to date from around 1840. However, the houses stand on land that formed part of the Loughry estate, and the name "Lindesayville" — as it appears on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map — strongly suggests that a member of the Lindesay family of Loughry was responsible for their construction. This may have been Frederick Lindesay, who lived at Rock Lodge from sometime between 1837 and 1846 until 1848. Whatever their precise origin, the two rows are recorded in the 1858 valuation as "eight labourers houses, gardens and plantations", rated collectively at £13 15s 0d.

The north-western terrace was designed for labourers, and although it appears externally as four dwellings, each was originally divided internally between two families, with each half containing its own entrance within the porch and its own stair. The south-western terrace — of which this house forms part — was built as it appears, providing four houses for four foremen and their families. When residents were first recorded by valuers in 1864, thirteen occupants were noted in total, indicating that one of the foremen's dwellings was also being shared. The named 1864 residents were: Robert Cowan and Edward Quinn; Isabella Montague and Nancy Miller; Jonathan Browne and James McNeigh; Samuel Ferguson and Rose Cowan; 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, Molesworth Road, Cookstown. After this, twelve rather than fourteen occupants are recorded, indicating that the foremen's cottages had all reverted 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, amalgamation of the labourers' cottages had begun, with Robert Mullen and Thomas McKernon each taking possession of two properties, one of which was converted into a shop (remaining so until the 1990s). The remaining two dwellings continued as double tenancies until the early 1970s, after which amalgamation accelerated, and by 1984 all of the former labourers' houses had been amalgamated with consequent internal changes. In the 1990s, three of these dwellings — originally containing six properties — were amalgamated again into a single house with an integral garage. The four former foremen's houses, of which this is one, have remained as separate properties, though all have rear extensions dating from around the 1980s.