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

A mid-terrace three-bay two-storey house built in 1897, this is the third dwelling from the left in a terrace of seven located on the east side of Church Square in Sion Mills. The house is rectangular on plan with a one-and-a-half-storey gabled return to the rear, abutted on the right by a single-storey flat-roofed extension, and a single-storey flat-roofed extension to the east.

The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles over a corbelled eaves course. Yellow brick corbelled chimneys serve the party walls and return. Two rooflights are set into the east pitch and three into the west pitch. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth, while the return is smooth rendered. Windows are square-headed timber-framed 1/1 sliding sashes in smooth reveals, all with painted masonry sills.

The principal elevation faces east and contains, at its centre, a round-arched-headed opening with a stepped painted brick surround. This frames a recessed replacement four-panelled timber entrance door with transom light, with a secondary door positioned at the left. A dipartite window with timber mullions is located at the ground floor left, while the ground floor right is abutted by an extension containing another dipartite window. Three windows are positioned at first floor level. The south gable is abutted by the neighbouring property. The west elevation is abutted at its centre by the gabled return, with exposed sections at left and right containing single windows at first floor. The north elevation of the gable contains two windows at first floor and a single window and door at ground floor level; the west gable is blank. The south elevation contains a single window and is abutted at ground floor by a single-storey extension containing a vertically-sheeted timber door and a uPVC casement window on its west elevation.

The house 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 square-headed vertically-sheeted timber door. A garden is situated across a path to the rear and is bounded by hedging. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes serve the roof.

The terrace was built as workers' dwellings by Herdman & Co., the flax-spinning mill that established Sion Mills as a company-owned model village. The terrace first appears on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey Map in 1905. According to Valuation Revisions records from 1860 to 1923, No. 5 is dated to 1897, with Nos. 6 and 7 from 1898, while Nos. 1–3 appear to be somewhat earlier. The houses were all described as "house, offices and small garden" and were leased from J. & E. Herdman. No. 5 was valued at £7, increasing to £15 in 1898.

According to historical sources, the village was originally constructed with simple, well-built one-storey terraced cottages to house workers. At the beginning of the twentieth century, under Captain Ricardo's direction as personnel and welfare officer, second storeys were added to many houses as more workers were needed during the boom in the linen trade that began in 1903, enabling villagers to take in lodgers during the week. The Herdmans' social experiment in Sion Mills followed principles similar to those of Robert Owen's experiment at New Lanark, providing workers with company housing, a shop with fair prices, a dispensary, healthcare funded by small weekly wages deductions (one penny per week in the early days, sixpence in the 1940s), a doctor's house and surgery, a fire service, and fire engine. The village was maintained by company-employed craftspeople until the 1960s. In the early 1960s, in an effort to raise capital during a slump in the linen industry, Herdman & Co. sold off village houses at prices ranging from £60 for the smallest to £120 for two-storey houses, and the village was subsequently privatised in the mid-1960s.

Despite modernisation of other parts of the terrace in recent years, resulting in some loss of unity within the group through replacement of some windows and doors, many original features remain, including the yellow brick chimneys and the largely intact interior layouts. The terrace remains an important architectural group within the model village of Sion Mills, enjoying a prominent setting looking out to Church Square.