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

11 Alexandra Place is a mid-terrace house built around 1880 as worker's housing for Herdman's Mill in Sion Mills. It forms part of a planned model village established by the Herdman family for their flax mill workers, comparable to developments such as Saltaire.

The house is a one-and-a-half-storey building arranged as a two-bay structure, rectangular in plan with a two-storey gabled extension added to the west around 2000. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and deep overhanging eaves with decorative timber bargeboards. The chimney is roughcast with a concrete coping and replacement clay pots. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth.

Windows are replacement square-headed timber 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 housing a replacement vertically-sheeted timber door on the left, a single window on the right, and a gabled dormer to the attic. The south gable is abutted by an adjoining house, as is the north gable. The west elevation has been modified by the extension and contains single uPVC casement windows 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, accessed through a vertically-sheeted timber gate. Gutters and downpipes are cast iron.

The house is second from the left in the original terrace of eleven, located on the west side of Melmount Road. The ground floor return has been remodelled and the first floor extended around 2000. The building first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905. Valuation Revisions from 1879 record houses "in Progress" along Alexandra Place, valued at £2 10s each as "house, office and yard" with various occupants.

Sion Mills was established in the mid-nineteenth century as a company-owned village by Herdman & Co. to house flax mill workers who numbered over 500 by 1853. Simple one-storey terraced cottages were built to provide housing and eliminate long commutes to work. The village maintained its own trades, healthcare system funded by worker contributions, shop, dispensary, doctor's house and surgery, fire service, and fire engine until the mills were privatised in the mid-1960s during a slump in the linen industry.

Due to alterations and extensions to this house and 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 Sion Mills Conservation Area.