9 Alexandra Place, Sion Mills, Co Tyrone, BT82 9HR, *** See General Comments***

9 Alexandra Place is an end-of-terrace house located on the west side of Melmount Road in Sion Mills. Built around 1890 as worker's housing for the Herdman's Mill, it is a two-bay single-storey structure with a two-storey gabled extension added to the west around 1995.

The building has a rectangular plan with a pitched roof of natural slate and blue-black clay ridge tiles, featuring deep overhanging eaves and decorative timber bargeboards. The chimney is smooth rendered with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth.

Windows are replacement square-headed timber-framed sliding sash set in smooth rendered architraves with painted masonry sills. The principal elevation faces east and contains a square-headed opening with smooth rendered architrave holding a replacement vertically sheeted timber door on the right, a single window on the left, and a vertical plat-band on the right. A central gabled dormer extends into the attic. The south gable is abutted by the adjacent terrace property. The west elevation, created by the extension, has single windows at each floor and a square-headed timber door at ground floor left. The north gable is blank, abutted by the extension which contains a timber entrance door with sidelights at ground floor left, two windows at ground floor right, and two wall-head dormers at first floor. The house is directly accessed from the street at the east. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses the rear yard, accessed through a vertically-sheeted timber door.

Rainwater goods are cast-iron half-round gutters with round downpipes.

The ground floor return was remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation around 1985. The building first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as part of a terrace along Alexandra Place. Valuation Revisions of 1879 note that houses were "in Progress". Number 9 was added in 1888, slightly later than the others, and is presently in use as a shop. It was valued at £2 10 shillings and listed as "house, office and yard".

Sion Mills was established as a company-owned town by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill run by the Herdman family as a model village for their workers and village maintenance staff, who were provided with healthcare options. The village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills required capital during a slump in the linen industry. Dwellings, both single and two-storey, were built by the Herdman family to house generations of flax mill workers, who by 1853 numbered more than 500. The cottages form part of a planned layout similar to Sir Titus Salt's work at Saltair. Originally consisting of simple but well-built single-storey terraced cottages to house workers and reduce commuting distances, the village maintained its own trades workforce until the 1960s for house and mill repairs. Householders paid fortnightly rent and gas charges. The Herdmans operated a shop with fair prices and a dispensary, and workers contributed one penny per week in the early days (later sixpence in the 1940s) towards healthcare, with the mill employing a doctor and nurse. A doctor's house and surgery were built in Mill Lane at the end of the 19th century. The village had its own fire service and fire engine.

Due to alterations and extensions to this house and those in the adjoining terrace, the small-scale houses have lost considerable original architectural character both individually and as a group. Their general massing and historic interest mean they still contribute to the Sion Mills Conservation Area.