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

6 Alexandra Place is an attached mid-terrace house built around 1880 as worker housing for the local Herdman's Mill, located on the west side of Melmount Road in Sion Mills. It is the fourth house from the left in a terrace of seven.

The house is a two-bay single-storey building on a rectangular plan, with a two-storey gabled extension to the west added around 1995. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles and features deep overhanging eaves with decorative timber bargeboards. The chimneys are smooth rendered with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth.

The principal elevation faces east and contains a square-headed opening with a smooth rendered architrave holding a replacement vertically-sheeted timber door on the left, a single window to the right, and a central gabled dormer to the attic flanked by a rooflight. Windows throughout are replacement square-headed uPVC casements set in smooth rendered architraves with painted masonry sills. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes serve the roof. The south gable is abutted by the adjacent property HB10/07/009E. The west elevation is occupied by the extension, which contains a single window at each floor and a square-headed uPVC door at ground floor right. The north gable is abutted by HB10/07/009G. The house is directly accessed from the street to the east. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a rear yard with access through a vertically-sheeted timber gate.

The building dates from the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as part of the Alexandra Place terrace. Valuation records from 1879 note that houses were in progress that year, with numbers 3 to 20 valued at £2 10s as 'house, office and yard'. The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation, with this extension dating to around 1995. The terrace was built by the Herdman family to house workers at their flax spinning mill. By 1853, over 500 workers were employed. The village was designed as a model community with planned layout similar to Saltaire, with simple but well-built terraced cottages to house workers conveniently near their employment. Until the 1960s, the mill maintained skilled tradespeople to repair and maintain the village houses, mill machinery, and waterpower systems. Householders paid fortnightly rent and gas charges. The Herdmans provided a shop, dispensary, doctor's house and surgery, fire service, and a healthcare system funded by small weekly deductions from workers' wages. The mill was privatised in the mid-1960s. Although the house and its neighbours have undergone considerable alterations and extensions that have diminished their original architectural character both individually and as a group, their general massing and historic interest contribute to the Sion Mills Conservation Area.