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

15 Alexandra Place is a mid-terrace house built around 1880 as worker's housing for the Herdman's Mill in Sion Mills. It is the sixth house from the left in a terrace of eleven, located on the west side of Melmount Road.

The building is constructed on a rectangular plan with pitched natural slate roof featuring terracotta ridge tiles over deep overhanging eaves, decorative timber bargeboards, and a roughcast chimney with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. Walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth. The principal elevation faces east and contains, at the left, a square-headed opening with an original vertically-sheeted timber door with decorative strap hinges; a single window at the right; and a central gabled dormer to the attic. Windows throughout are replacement square-headed uPVC casements in smooth rendered reveals with painted masonry sills. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes complete the rainwater goods.

The south gable is abutted by the neighbouring property HB10/07/009N, while the north gable is abutted by HB10/07/009P. The west elevation is abutted by a two-storey flat-roofed extension added around 1990, which contains a single uPVC casement window at each floor and a square-headed timber sheeted 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 provided through a vertically-sheeted timber gate.

The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation around 1990. 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 note that houses were "in Progress" and numbered 3–20, valued at £2 10s each 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. The village functioned as a model settlement for mill workers and village maintenance staff, who enjoyed options for healthcare. Originally comprising simple but well-built one-storey terraced cottages, the village was designed to house workers close to employment and mirrored similar philanthropic developments such as Sir Titus Salt's work at Saltair. Until the 1960s, the mill employed tradespeople to maintain and repair all village houses, the mill, its machinery, and the waterpower system. Workers paid rent and gas charges fortnightly. The Herdman family provided a shop, dispensary, doctor's house and surgery, and maintained a fire service. The village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills required capital during a decline in the linen industry.

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