50 Bryansford village, Ballyhafry, Newcastle, Co Down, BT33 0PT

This is a single-storey house with an attic, forming part of a picturesque row of four rubble-built cottages on the south-east side of the main road through Bryansford village. The row is characterised by roof overhangs, tall chimneys, and gabled dormers. The property at number 50 is unusual in that it was created, probably around 1900, by amalgamating the small cottage at the south-west end of the row with half of what had previously been a separate neighbouring property to the north-east.

The three central cottages in the row — the oldest — were built around 1826. One of them originally housed a school which, according to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 1836, was "erected in the year 1826." The same Memoirs describe six cottages in the village "built in a gothic style and given to persons rent free," and it is believed this row represents three of those six. The cottage now forming the south-west portion of number 50 was built slightly later, probably around 1830, as the coursing of its stonework differs from its neighbours, though it appears to be shown on the first Ordnance Survey map of 1834. The fourth cottage at the north-east end of the row was added after 1859, the date of the revised Ordnance Survey map on which it does not appear.

The front façade faces north-west and is asymmetrical. To the right is a gabled porch with timber and glazed sides, a glazed door, and decorative bargeboards. This porch was likely originally open, as those of the neighbouring properties still are, and its current enclosed form represents a later modernisation. To the left of the porch are two windows with mullioned and transomed multi-pane frames, each with a label moulding over. The front slope of the roof has a single gabled dormer with decorative bargeboards and a finial, slated sides, and multi-pane casement frames. The front façade is finished in rubble stonework, while the south-west gable is rendered. The roof is covered in natural slate with a generous overhang, and there is a Velux window to the rear. A tall paired chimney stack to the north-east is shared with the adjacent number 48, and a plainer rendered chimney stack sits on the south-west gable. To the upper level of the south-west gable are two small windows, one with lattice lights and the other with what appears to be a sash frame. A single-storey timber shed is attached to the south-west gable.

To the rear there is a large modern flat-roofed extension, which appears to have been built in stages.

The history of the row's occupants is partially documented. None of the properties were recorded in the first valuation of around 1835. The schoolhouse within what is now number 48 is referred to in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 1836 as a "boys and girls school." By 1856 it served solely as a boys' school, the girls having transferred to a separate school at the western end of Bryansford. By the early 1860s it had become an embroidery or sewing school. The 1863 valuation returns record a Mary Camlin as mistress of the Sewing School, with Henry Kennedy, Henry Bryan, and James Creighton listed as residents of the remaining properties in the row. The Sewing School was still operating in 1886, when a Miss Bella Bailie was mistress, but does not appear in any directories after 1900. The amalgamation that created the present number 50 — and the corresponding repartitioning that formed the present number 48 — is believed by the current owner to have taken place around 1900, possibly connected to the closure of the Sewing School. For most of the 20th century the properties in the row have been used as private dwellings, with the exception of the cottage at number 42, which has served as an Orange Hall since the early 1900s.