18 Molesworth Road, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8NR

A well-proportioned and detailed semi-detached house designed in picturesque late-Victorian style, built around 1897. The house was constructed as one of a pair with the adjacent property (HB09/13/034B), probably by John McNally who held the lease of the plot at that time. According to the valuers' office notebook, each dwelling was built of rubble masonry and brick with a tile roof, with estimated construction costs of £459 and a rateable value of £18.

The house is a brick semi-detached structure of two-and-a-half storeys, roughly square in plan with a two-storey return to the rear and an L-shaped single-storey lean-to outbuilding to the rear yard. Set back from Molesworth Road in the north-eastern suburbs of Cookstown, it is approached through a small front garden via a gated path.

The front south elevation is the principal façade, featuring a doorway to the right and a squared bay window to the left. The doorway has a square-headed timber panelled door with an overlight, surmounted by a cut-stone lintel with a carved central keystone. It is fitted with a brass knocker, doorknob and letterbox. The bay window contains square-headed windows (now replacement uPVC) set on cut-stone sills with cut-stone lintels and carved stone central keystones. Both the doorway and projecting bay window are surmounted by a slate roof at ground floor level with a carved stone cornice to the eaves. The upper level has a canted bay to the left, supported by the squared bay beneath and surmounted by a flat roof with a carved timber cornice. To the right is a square-headed window with replacement uPVC and original stone dressings. A half-dormer to the roof contains a square-headed replacement uPVC window and displays decorative timber bargeboards to the gable, with a central carved stone finial surmounting the apex.

External walls to the front elevation are straw-coloured brick with decorative stone quoins, a carved stone plinth to the base, a string course of red and engineering brick below window lintel level, and an additional projecting carved stone string course below the half-dormer. The carved stone eaves feature a dentilled course to the front and side elevations. The main roof is hipped and slated with pierced clay ridge tiles, decorated with carved stone finials to the top of each hip. Rainwater goods are cast-iron. A brick chimney with a dentilled course and profiled stepped capping rises to the left (west).

The west side elevation has a projecting bay window to the ground floor with a hipped slate roof. The upper levels have no window openings. The north rear elevation contains an assortment of uPVC and timber sash windows, with a half-dormer to the upper level.

The two-storey return to the rear has an assortment of timber casement and timber sash windows set on painted cut-stone sills. A square-headed door to the west elevation provides access. External walls are ruled-and-lined render. The return forms a shared hipped and pitched roof with the symmetrical return of the adjacent building, with a shared brick chimney at the apex of the north gable end. The rear lean-to outbuildings are painted render with metal roofs. The rear yard is bound by a high rendered wall.

The house is set back from Molesworth Road behind a low balustraded stone wall. This boundary wall has simple square pillars with vermiculated quoins and pyramidal stone caps. The building contributes significantly to the Victorian character of Molesworth Road, which is notable for its railway-related structures and varied Victorian housing stock.

Occupancy records show the house was home to James Cotton in 1899, followed by William Gardner in 1901, William Browne in 1903, and Thomas J. Ekins in 1908. Following a gap in documentation, James S. Longstaff is recorded as the occupant in 1936. Subsequent tenants and freeholders included Thomas Charles Huey (1941), Otto Handl (1941), John C. Blakley (1942), Thomas C. O'Gorman (1955), S.G. Corrigan (1962), and D.E. Owen (1963 onwards), with Owen also becoming freeholder.