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

10 Alexandra Place, Sion Mills, is an end-of-terrace house built around 1880 as worker's housing for the local Herdman's Mill. It stands on the west side of Melmount Road within the Sion Mills Conservation Area.

The house is a one-and-a-half-storey structure on a rectangular plan, with a two-storey flat-roofed extension added to the west around 1985. The original building is two bays wide. The pitched roof is covered in fibre cement slates with blue and black clay ridge tiles, set over deep overhanging eaves. A roughcast chimney with concrete coping and replacement clay pots rises from the structure. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes manage the drainage.

Windows throughout 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, holding a replacement uPVC door; a single window is positioned to the left, which has been enlarged with a replacement sill. A flat-roofed dormer with horizontally-sheeted uPVC fascias projects into the attic space above. The south gable is blank. The western extension, abutting the original house at the left, contains two windows at first floor and a small window at ground floor. The west elevation of the extension includes a single window at each floor and a square-headed uPVC door at ground floor left. The north gable is abutted by an adjoining property.

The house is accessed directly from the street at its eastern front. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a rear yard, which is reached through a vertically-sheeted timber door.

Sion Mills was established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill, as a model village for its workers. The Valuation Revisions of 1879 note that houses were in progress that year, and Nos 3–20 were valued at £2 10 shillings each as a "house, office and yard" with various occupiers. By 1853, the mill employed upwards of 500 workers. The terraced cottages were part of a planned layout comparable to Sir Titus Salt's work at Saltaire. The village originally consisted of simple but well-built one-storey terraced cottages to house workers and avoid long commutes to the mill. Until the 1960s, the mill trained and employed people in all the necessary trades to maintain and repair village houses and the mill machinery and waterpower system. Householders paid fortnightly rent and gas charges, which increased occasionally. The Herdmans provided a shop at fair prices and a dispensary; workers contributed one penny per week in the early days and sixpence in the 1940s towards healthcare, and the mill employed a doctor and mill 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 linen industry declined and capital was needed.

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