'Labourers' Cottages', 58-62 Bryansford Village, Ballyhafry, Newcastle, BT33 0PT

These are picturesque labourers' cottages dating from around 1820, built as part of the Roden Estate in Bryansford village. Originally three separate dwellings, they now form a single amalgamated property. The terrace has a mild Elizabethan character and is constructed in a Picturesque manner, single storey over a basement, with large projecting gabled porches. The block appears at first glance to consist of four dwellings, but the easternmost unit was built as an outbuilding serving the large former dower house immediately to the east, a function it apparently still performs. The three actual cottages were amalgamated into one property by at least 1972.

The front façade faces north and is single storey and, as befits a Picturesque composition, asymmetrical. To the right is a large, gabled double porch. The west face of this porch contains the front door, which is no longer in use. The east face is now blank, the door to what was No. 60 having been blocked. Short flights of steps rise to each door position, though the decorative newel post has had its top portion removed. The north face of the porch has a pair of tall, narrow sash windows with moulded drip mouldings and label stops. Directly above these windows is a tall, narrow arrow-slit opening. To the right of the porch is a sash window without astragals, surmounted by a small dormer-like gable feature and a decorative drip moulding with label stops. To the left of the porch are two mullioned, tripartite sash windows, each with drip mouldings and a matching dormer-gable feature. Further to the left is a further single porch with one central sash window with drip moulding. The west and east sides of the porch are both blank, and the door on the west face has been blocked, though the steps leading up to it remain. Further to the far left are two double sash windows, each with a central mullion and moulded drip moulding; both of these windows are blind. The west gable is blank. The east gable has a flat-roofed garage obscuring the lower level, and the upper level is also blank.

Because the ground falls away to the south, the entire block reads as two storeys on that side. The south façade now serves as the principal entrance to the house. At the far left of the ground and basement level is a sash window with a vertical mullion. To the right of this is a modern hipped-roof timber porch. Further right are five windows: numbers one to four have sash frames with a vertical astragal, while number five has a casement frame. Numbers two and five are wider than the others and appear to have been the original rear door openings. At first-floor level on the left is a modern high-level window. To its right are five somewhat randomly spaced sash windows. At the far right of the south façade is a wall dividing the gardens of No. 56 (the outbuilding) from Nos. 58–62. On the first floor of No. 56's south façade is a central timber-sheeted door with a plain glazed fanlight, flanked on each side by a tall arrow-slit window opening, with a concrete stair and steel handrail rising to the door. At ground-floor level is a double door of sheeted timber with a garage door opening to the far right.

The entire façade of the block is rendered and painted. The words "Labourers Cottages" are spelled out in raised letters on the front façade in a typeface dating from around 1915. The roof is covered in natural slate with a slight overhang and plain bargeboards. There are three rendered chimney stacks, all quite low in proportion; it is reasonable to suppose they were originally considerably taller. Rainwater goods are mainly cast iron. To the rear, the garden wall retains a now-blocked arched gate opening, which appears to have provided access between the labourers' cottages and the outbuilding during the period when No. 54 functioned as a dower house.

As the name indicates, and according to the present owner, the cottages were built around 1820 to house labourers employed on the Roden Estate. They are likely to represent three of the "6 cottages which are built in a gothic style and given to persons rent free" described in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1836. The neighbouring outbuilding at the east end of the block was almost certainly built at the same time to serve the adjoining dower house. Valuation records from the 1830s relating to the cottages are missing, but the 1863 valuation records show the three cottages as occupied by Henry O'Brien, John Halliday, and James Smith, with a combined rateable value below £3. The typeface used for the name plaque on the front façade suggests — unless it was placed there as a deliberate anachronism — that the block still functioned as three separate dwellings in the early 1900s. All three had been amalgamated into one property by at least 1972.