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

12 Alexandra Place is a mid-terrace one-and-a-half-storey house built around 1880 as worker housing for the local Herdman's Mill, located on the west side of Melmount Road in Sion Mills. It is the third house from the left in a terrace of eleven dwellings.

The house is rectangular on plan with a two-storey flat-roofed extension to the west added around 1980. The pitched roof is covered with asbestos tiles and has terracotta ridge tiles; it features deep overhanging eaves with decorative timber bargeboards. The chimney is roughcast with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth.

Windows are replacement square-headed uPVC casements set in smooth rendered architraves with painted masonry sills. The principal elevation faces east and contains a square-headed opening with smooth rendered architrave at the right, housing a replacement timber-panelled door; a single window to the right, which has been enlarged with a replacement sill; and a central gabled dormer to the attic. The south gable is abutted by the neighbouring property HB10/07/009K, and the north gable by HB10/07/009M. The west elevation, created by the extension, features a single uPVC casement window at each floor and a square-headed uPVC door at ground floor right. The house is directly accessed from the street at the east.

A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a rear yard, with access through a vertically-sheeted timber gate. Gutters are cast-iron half-round with round downpipes. The roof was originally natural slate.

The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation around 1980. The building first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as part of the terrace along Alexandra Place. Valuation Revisions from 1879 note that houses were "in Progress" at that date, with numbers 3–20 valued at £2 10s and listed as "house, office and yard" with various occupiers.

Sion Mills was a company-owned village established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill operated by the Herdman family as a model village for their workers and maintenance staff. Dwellings, both single and two-storey, were built to house the new generation of flax mill workers, who by 1853 numbered upwards of 500. The cottages are part of a planned layout similar to the work of Sir Titus Salt at Saltair. The village originally consisted of simple but well-built one-storey terraced cottages, designed to save workers from having to walk miles to their employment. Until the 1960s, the Mill maintained trained staff to cover all necessary trades for maintaining and repairing the village houses and surrounding areas, as well as the Mill, its machinery, and the waterpower system. Householders paid rent and gas charges fortnightly, which were occasionally increased. The Herdmans provided a shop with fair prices and a dispensary. Workers contributed one penny per week in the early days, reducing to sixpence in the 1940s, towards healthcare; the Mill employed 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. The mills were privatised in the mid-1960s when the company needed to raise capital during a slump in the linen industry.

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.