2 Sion Terrace, Sion Mills, Co Tyrone, BT82 9HB

An impressive and well-proportioned mid-terrace two-bay two-storey house built around 1860, situated sixth from the left in a terrace of seven on the east side of Church Square in Sion Mills. The building is part of a group of worker's dwellings erected by Herdman & Co, the flax spinning mill company that established and ran Sion Mills as a model village. Although some modernisation has occurred in recent years with replacement of certain windows and doors, the terrace retains many original features and considerable architectural unity. The interior layouts of these simply detailed dwellings remain largely intact, and original yellow brick chimneys survive. The terrace occupies an important position within the village and benefits from its setting overlooking Church Square.

The house is rectangular in plan with a one-and-a-half-storey gabled return to the west, further abutted by a single-storey flat-roofed extension. The pitched roof is natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles over a corbelled eaves course. Smooth rendered chimneys with clay pots rise to the party walls, while the return features a yellow brick corbelled chimney. Two rooflights pierce the east and west roof pitches. Walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth; the return is smooth rendered. Windows are replacement square-headed timber casements set in smooth reveals, all with painted masonry sills. The principal elevation faces east and contains, at the left, a round-arched-headed opening with a stepped painted brick surround containing a recessed four-panelled timber entrance door with transom light. A single window occupies the ground floor right, with two windows at first floor level. The south gable is abutted by an adjoining property. The west elevation, exposed only at its left section, contains a single window to each storey. The north elevation of the gable has two first-floor windows and a replacement timber-sheeted entrance door at ground floor left, flanked at the right by a single window; the west and south elevations are blank. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a rear yard, accessed through a square-headed vertically-sheeted timber door. A garden lies across a path to the rear, bounded on all sides by hedging. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes drain the roof.

Sion Mills was a company-owned town established by Herdman & Co to house workers and village maintenance staff, who benefited from healthcare provision and other company-sponsored amenities. The village was originally built with simple one-storey terraced cottages. According to historical records, when the linen trade boomed in 1903 under the direction of Captain Ricardo, second storeys were added to many houses to accommodate additional workers and enable villagers to take in lodgers during the week. The terrace is first shown on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey Map in 1905. Annual Revisions record No. 4 from 1880, No. 5 from 1897, and Nos. 6 and 7 from 1898; Nos. 1 to 3 appear somewhat earlier. The houses were originally leased from J&E Herdman and were described as "house, offices and small garden." Valuation records show Nos. 1-4 valued at £6 10s, No. 5 at £7 (increased to £15 in 1898), and Nos. 6-7 at £8 10s.

Until the 1960s, the mill maintained its own workforce of tradespeople to repair and maintain the village houses and surrounding infrastructure as well as the mill machinery and waterpower system. Householders were charged fortnightly rent and gas rates. The Herdmans operated a shop with fair prices, a dispensary, and a doctor's house with surgery built at Mill Lane in the late 19th century. Workers contributed one penny per week in the early period (rising to sixpence in the 1940s) towards healthcare, with the mill paying for a doctor and nurse. The village maintained its own fire service and fire engine. In the early 1960s, during a slump in the linen industry when the village was privatised and the mills needed to raise capital, houses were sold off at prices ranging from £60 for the smallest to £120 for two-storey houses. The Herdman's social experiment in providing company housing and welfare was undertaken along the lines of Robert Owen's approach at New Lanark.