70 James Street, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8LT

70 James Street, Cookstown is a Grade B2 listed building — a mid-Victorian terraced house, now in office use, built around 1878. Although altered both internally and externally, it remains a well-proportioned example of its type and holds particular group value as one of three matching terraced buildings (along with the adjacent properties at 66 and 68 James Street).

The building is a three-storey rendered structure, rectangular in plan, with a three-storey lean-to return to the rear. A single-storey extension has been added to the rear, fitted with an external metal stair. A rubble stone outbuilding, dating to around 1880, stands to the rear and adjoins the return via a stairwell.

The front west elevation is set back from the street behind a tarmac parking area. It features a doorway to the right, segmental-headed with a timber panelled door and overlight, flanked by panelled pilasters surmounted by carved scrolled timber console brackets with acanthus leaf stops. These brackets originally supported a projecting carved timber cornice and pediment, visible on the adjacent matching terraces but now obscured by modern signage. A canted bay to the left contains 1/1 timber sash windows and is surmounted by a projecting stone dentilled cornice with a decorative carved timber fascia and hipped roof. Windows to the upper levels are segmental-headed, containing 1/1 timber sash windows with carved stone surrounds and central keystones. The first floor window sits on a continuous projecting stone sill course. The second floor window rests on a cut-stone sill with decorative carved stone console brackets beneath. Further signage obscures the first floor windows. The side south elevation is painted render and largely blank. The rear east elevation has replacement uPVC windows. The roof is natural slate with a polychromatic brick chimney, profiled capping to the north.

The lean-to return contains an assortment of uPVC windows on concrete sills and a painted door on the north elevation at second floor level. The derelict outbuilding opposite the rear elevation features timber sash windows and blocked elliptical-headed archways with brick dressings on its east and west elevations. Square-headed upper-level window openings with brick dressings remain intact.

The building stands within a mixed terrace on the rising sloped pavement to the eastern side of James Street, at the southern edge of Cookstown's commercial centre. The wider terrace comprises mainly two-storey Victorian buildings dating from the early to late nineteenth century.

The building was probably constructed by Richard Cluff, whose family had held the lease since at least 1859. Its first occupant was William Glasgow, with an original rateable value of £24-15-0. Subsequent occupants included John Raphael (1884), Andrew McCollum (1885), William H. Yeats (1886), John Malone (1891), James Crawford (1916), Mary Crawford (from 1921), John Todd (from 1924, also leaseholder of the adjacent properties at 66 and 68), Annie Connolly (1936), Samuel Carlisle (1940), John McMaster (1947), Dr. John Flanigan (1959), and Dr. J.G. Muldoon (1964). M. Cameron served as leaseholder from at least 1956 until 1972.