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

4 Alexandra Place is a mid-terrace one-and-a-half-storey house built around 1880 as worker's housing for the Herdman's Mill in Sion Mills. The house is located on the west side of Melmount Road and forms part of a planned terrace of seven cottages. It is the second house from the left in the terrace.

The building is rectangular on plan with a two-storey gabled extension added to the west around 1995. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles set over deep overhanging eaves, with decorative timber bargeboards. A smooth rendered chimney with concrete coping and replacement clay pots rises from the roof.

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. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes provide water drainage.

The principal elevation faces east and contains at the left a square-headed opening with smooth rendered architrave containing a vertically sheeted timber door with decorative strap hinges. A single window is positioned to the right, with a central gabled dormer serving the attic. The south gable is abutted by an adjacent property, and the north gable is similarly abutted. The west elevation was created by the 1995 extension and contains a single window at each floor level and a square-headed uPVC door at ground floor left.

The house is directly accessed from the street at the east. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a yard to the rear, accessed through a vertically-sheeted timber gate.

The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first-floor accommodation around 1995. The building first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as part of the terrace along Alexandra Place. Valuation Revisions of 1879 record that houses were in progress at this date, with properties numbered 3 to 20 valued at £2 10s each and listed as containing a house, office and yard.

Sion Mills was a company-owned town established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill run by the Herdman family as a model village for their workers and village maintenance staff. By 1853, the workers numbered upwards of 500. The cottages form part of a planned layout similar 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 save them from having to walk miles to work. Until the 1960s, the Mill employed people to cover all necessary trades needed to maintain and repair the village houses, the Mill and its machinery, and the water power system. The Herdmans provided a shop with fair prices and a dispensary, and workers paid a small weekly contribution towards healthcare, with the Mill employing a doctor and mill nurse. The village had its own fire service and fire engine. The village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills 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, these small-scale houses have lost a considerable amount of their original architectural character both individually and as a group. However, their general massing and historic interest mean they still contribute to the Sion Mills Conservation Area.