Sion Mills (Former) Elementary School, 147 Melmount Road, Sion Mills, County Tyrone, BT82 9EX

Former Elementary School, Sion Mills, County Tyrone Built 1879

Overview

This is an attractively detailed former elementary school built in 1879 in a Picturesque style, sitting at the north end of the Sion Mills Conservation Area on the west side of Melmount Road. The building is symmetrical in composition, with a double-gabled form enclosing twin halls, and presents an M-profile principal elevation to the road. It remains a prominent historic feature in the village streetscape and, though no longer used as a school, continues to serve an important social function as a Presbyterian church hall. A recent refurbishment has been sympathetically carried out, with an unobtrusive extension added to the rear.

Plan and Form

The school is detached and two bays wide, T-shaped on plan. The stem of the T, facing the road, is a double-pile gabled hall. To either side of the principal elevation are single-storey entrance bays with hipped roofs, slightly recessed from the main facade. A small return and a modern extension occupy the rear.

Exterior

The roof is covered in natural slate with angled clay ridge tiles. Ventilation stacks on leaded plinths rise from the ridges, and there is a tall brick chimney to the rear and a further brick chimney to the south gable. The principal gables carry decorative painted timber bargeboards with carved timber brackets and drop finials. Half-round cast-iron gutters and box downpipes are fitted over exposed rafter tails, and a painted cast-iron water spout is fixed to the principal elevation.

The walling is uncoursed squared rubble, built to courses at the porches, over a chamfered stone plinth, with brick quoins. A wide brick eaves band with dentil detail runs across the building and extends to the window surrounds. The rear elevation and extension are painted roughcast. Window openings are segmental-headed unless noted otherwise. All openings have painted masonry sills and chamfered brick surrounds with moulded stone imposts and keystones, except those to the rear, which are plainly detailed. Multi-pane replacement timber casement windows are fitted throughout.

Principal Elevation (East-Facing)

The principal elevation presents an M-profile double gable to the road. At the centre, a projecting datestone is inscribed "Sion Mills / Public Elementary / School / 1879", with a downpipe passing through the centre of it. Each gable contains a triple round-headed window opening, with the central opening taller than the flanking two, all sharing a sill carried on masonry corbels. Each porch has a round-headed door opening fitted with a replacement diagonally-sheeted timber door with strap hinges, accessed by a stone step. The side elevation of each porch has a pair of square-headed windows sharing a brick surround and sill; the rear elevation of each porch is blank.

Other Elevations

The south elevation is partly abutted by the porch at the right, with the rear section projecting and finished in roughcast. The hall section is eight windows wide. The rear gabled section has two windows to the gable. The rear elevation is abutted by the modern extension to the right and has a return to the left of centre; the exposed original portion of this elevation has two windows to the right of the return and three to the left. The return is blank except for a small square window to the rear. The north elevation is detailed in the same manner as the south, except that the rear block here is four windows wide.

Setting

The former school is set back from the road and surrounded by tarmac hardstandings, formerly the schoolyard. A roughcast former toilet block stands to the north-west. The entire plot is enclosed by a rubblestone boundary wall with soldier coping. Pedestrian access from Melmount Road is through a painted wrought-iron gate hung on tooled dressed stone piers. Modern vehicular gates serve the rear. Immediately to the south stands Sion Mills Presbyterian Church. The wide grass verges and tree-lined road of the Conservation Area provide an attractive wider setting.

Historical Context

Sion Mills was a company-owned model village established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill. The Herdman family ran the village for their workers and maintenance staff, providing healthcare among other benefits, until the village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills needed to raise capital during a slump in the linen industry.

The school building is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905, captioned "School." Listed in valuation records under exemptions as the male and female National School house, it was valued at £25.

Architectural historian Alistair Rowan described it among the buildings of Sion Mills: "The wide grass verges and tree-lined road provide an attractive setting for more half-timbered work by Unsworth: ... The Public Elementary Schools of 1879 are double-gabled, with the grouped round-headed windows that Thomas Turner so often used."

An earlier school on or near the site is mentioned in the travel writings of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Hall, who visited in 1843 and wrote of the general character of the village and the Herdman family's commitment to the welfare and education of their workforce: "But this system of social order and social industry is not, as we have said, the only advantage enjoyed at Sion Mills.... A school is established, and to the Sunday-school the Messrs. Herdman themselves attend, taking the greatest interest in the educational progress of their workpeople, and distributing motives to improvement, lavishly and judiciously. Nor are they behind London in the idea, that 'the people' may derive benefit from the introduction of more refined tastes into the business of everyday life. The traveller's ear is refreshed, if he pass along during the long evenings of winter, or the bright cheerful ones of summer, by the music of a full band and instead of the saddened hearts and saddened features he has been led to suppose inseparable from the crowded factory, he hears a chorus of cheerful voices, or the echoes of dancing feet."