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

19 Alexandra Place, Sion Mills, is a mid-terrace house built around 1880 as worker's housing for Herdman's Mill. It is the tenth house from the left in a terrace of eleven, positioned on the west side of Melmount Road, and contributes to the Sion Mills Conservation Area.

The building is constructed as a single-storey house with a one-and-a-half-storey configuration, though it has been significantly altered. A two-storey flat-roofed extension was added to the west elevation around 1985. The original roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with terracotta 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.

The principal elevation faces east and is two bays wide, containing a square-headed opening with a replacement panelled timber door and transom on the left, a single window on the right, and a central gabled dormer to the attic. Windows throughout are timber casements in smooth rendered reveals with painted masonry sills. The west elevation, now partially abutted by the extension, contains two windows at first-floor level, a replacement timber door at ground floor left, and a single window on the right. The building is directly accessed from the street to the east.

The property is bounded by a roughcast wall with concrete coping enclosing a rear yard, accessed through a vertically-sheeted timber gate. External fixtures include cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes.

The building is first recorded on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905. Valuation Revisions from 1879 note that houses were "in Progress" and valued these properties at £2 10 shillings, listed as "house, office and yard" with various occupants. Like its neighbours, this house has undergone considerable alterations and extensions, resulting in loss of original architectural character both individually and as part of the terrace group, though the general massing and historic interest remain significant to the conservation area.

Sion Mills was established as a company-owned model village by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill, to house their expanding workforce. By 1853, over 500 workers were employed. The cottages were part of a planned layout comparable to Sir Titus Salt's Saltair. The village originally consisted of simple but well-built single-storey terraced cottages. Until the 1960s, the mill maintained a complete infrastructure of trained trades workers for maintaining village houses, the mill machinery, and the water-power system. Workers paid rent and gas charges fortnightly. The Herdmans also provided a shop, a dispensary with healthcare funded by weekly worker contributions (one penny in the early days, sixpence in the 1940s), a doctor's house and surgery, and a village fire service. The village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills needed to raise capital during a downturn in the linen industry.