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

17 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. It is the eighth house from the left in a terrace of eleven, located on the west side of Melmount Road.

The building is rectangular in plan with a two-storey flat-roofed extension to the west added around 2000. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles, set over deep overhanging eaves with decorative timber bargeboards. A roughcast chimney with concrete coping and replacement clay pots rises from the roof. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth.

The principal elevation faces east and contains a square-headed opening at the left with a replacement vertically-sheeted timber door and transom, 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. The south gable is abutted by the adjacent terrace house to the south, and the north gable is similarly abutted by the house to the north. The west elevation, partially formed by the extension, contains two uPVC casement windows at first-floor level and a replacement uPVC door with a window at ground floor. The building 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. Rainwater goods comprise cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes.

The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first-floor accommodation around 2000. 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 houses in progress at that date, with numbers 3 to 20 valued at £2 10 shillings as 'house, office and yard' with various occupiers.

Sion Mills was a company-owned town established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill operated by the Herdman family as a model village for their workers and village maintenance staff. By 1853, the workforce amounted to upwards of 500. The cottages form part of a planned layout similar to that of Sir Titus Salt at Saltaire. The village originally consisted of simple but well-built one-storey terraced cottages to house workers and reduce their commuting distance. Until the 1960s, the Mill employed tradespeople to maintain and repair both village houses and the Mill itself, including its machinery and waterpower system. Residents were charged fortnightly rent and gas rates, which were raised occasionally. The Herdmans operated a shop with fair prices and a dispensary, and workers contributed a small weekly payment—one penny in the early days, rising to sixpence by the 1940s—towards healthcare funded and supervised by the Mill, which employed a doctor and mill nurse. A doctor's house and surgery were built in Mill Lane at the end of the 19th century. The village maintained 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, the 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 Sion Mills Conservation Area.