56-58 Loy Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8PE

56–58 Loy Street is a modest rendered end-of-terrace former house and office, built around 1880, now derelict. It stands two-and-a-half storeys high and is rectangular in plan, with a two-storey pitched-roof return to the rear and an adjoining single-storey lean-to. The building forms part of a mixed terrace of similar scale along the eastern side of Loy Street, and has group value with its neighbours, with which it shares a common scale and proportion. It was built in conjunction with the adjacent properties at nos. 52–56 Loy Street.

The front west elevation is set back from the street, with a concrete parking area open to the pavement — formerly a front garden. The ground floor contains two principal elements: a doorway to the left and a shopfront to the right, dating from around 1956. The doorway is elliptical-headed with a panelled timber door, two panelled pilasters to the sides set on cut-stone pad stones, and a carved stone surround with a decorative carved keystone. A projecting carved timber cornice sits at springer level. The shopfront has a doorway to the left and a shop window to the right, with panelled pilasters to each opening supporting a decorative carved timber signboard. The door is glazed and panelled, with an overlight above. The upper-floor windows are square-headed with cut-stone sills and 1-over-1 timber sliding sash frames. The front elevation is finished in plain painted render resting on a shallow rendered plinth, with a carved stone dentilled course at eaves level supporting an eaves course. Rainwater goods to the front are cast iron; to the rear they are uPVC.

The south elevation is gable-ended, with the side of the rear return visible to the right. Ground-floor windows have been boarded up. Two timber sash windows survive at upper levels. A centrally positioned polychromatic brick chimney with clay chimney pots is set to the ridge line of this elevation. The rear east elevation reads as three storeys — that is, two storeys over a basement — and is finished in unpainted cement render. No window openings are visible beyond the return. The roof is covered in artificial slate, with a further polychromatic brick chimney with a profiled capping.

The rear return contains an assortment of timber sliding sash and casement windows, with some additional windows boarded up. A further centrally positioned polychromatic brick chimney with clay chimney pots is set to the ridge line of the south elevation of the return. The lean-to has a painted timber door. To the rear there is a small yard enclosed by a rubble stone wall, with several outbuildings beyond.

The building has been subject to replacement windows, though most of the external fabric is otherwise largely intact. Despite its modest character, the door surround and dentilled eaves course lend a degree of architectural importance to the composition, and the well-detailed shopfront is considered particularly significant.

The site is shown as developed on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34. In a valuation modification of around 1838 — carried out following the raising of the rateable threshold from £3 to £5 — the site was recorded as occupied by one of thirty-five houses exempt from rating, meaning they were relatively modest buildings below rateable value. Most of these dwellings appear to have been recorded in 1834, but the accompanying town plan was scrapped and redrawn around 1838 with new references, making it almost impossible to correlate what appears on the revised plan with the building details recorded in 1834. The modest houses exempt from valuation in 1838 were undoubtedly still standing in 1859, when two dwellings — then occupied by an Annie Crooks and Sarah Steenson respectively, and still below rateable value — are recorded on this plot in the valuation of that year, one of them set to the rear. These houses stood until 1880, when they and their two neighbours to the north were demolished and replaced by the short terrace seen today (nos. 52–58). This new development appears to have been the work of a James Howard, who acquired the lease of the entire site from the Gunning-Moore estate in 1879. His name was initially recorded in the lease documents as James Steward before being changed to James Howard; it is not known whether this reflects an actual change in the identity of the leaseholder or a correction of an error, though the latter seems more likely.

The first recorded occupant is James Howard himself, with a rateable value of £13 10s 0d. Howard remained until 1918, when a Samuel Purvis became tenant and leaseholder, followed by George Ferguson in 1923. John and George A. Ferguson — the latter probably the same man already occupying the building — took over the lease in 1944. John Ferguson is listed as resident in 1956, by which time no. 58 was recorded as a separate property described as an office for the first time. Mr Ferguson was still in residence in 1972.

The building maintains a common building line with the main street, running through William Street, James Street, and Loy Street. The street is largely comprised of modest two-storey houses of similar scale. The property is privately owned.