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

8 Alexandra Place is a mid-terrace house built around 1880 as worker's housing for the Herdman's Mill at Sion Mills. It is located on the west side of Melmount Road and forms part of a terrace of seven houses. The building is now ungraded but remains within the Sion Mills Conservation Area.

The house is rectangular on plan with a two-storey gabled extension added to the west around 1995. It is a one-and-a-half-storey structure, positioned sixth from the left in the terrace. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles over deep overhanging eaves, with decorative timber bargeboards. The chimney is smooth rendered with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. Walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth.

Windows are replacement square-headed uPVC casements set in smooth rendered architraves with painted masonry sills. The principal elevation faces east and contains, at left, a square-headed opening with smooth rendered architrave holding a replacement four-panelled timber door with glazed top lights. A single window sits at right, with a vertical platband at right and a central gabled dormer to the attic. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes are fitted to the roof.

The south gable is abutted by the neighbouring property HB10/07/009G, while the north gable is abutted by HB10/07/009I. The west elevation is abutted by the 1995 extension and contains a single window at each floor and a square-headed uPVC door at ground floor left. The house is directly accessed from the street at east. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a yard to the rear, with access through a vertically-sheeted timber gate.

The ground floor return was remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation around 1995. The building is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as part of the terrace along Alexandra Place. Valuation Revisions from 1879 note that houses were in progress at that date. Numbers 3–20 were valued at £2 10s and listed 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. Workers had access to healthcare provided by the company until the village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills needed to raise capital during a slump in the linen industry. The terrace forms part of a planned layout comparable to Sir Titus Salt's work at Saltaire. By 1853, the flax mill employed upwards of 500 workers.

The village originally consisted of simple but well-built one-storey terraced cottages to house workers and save them long walks to work. Until the 1960s, the mill trained and employed people covering all necessary trades for maintaining and repairing village houses and the mill and its machinery, including the waterpower system. Householders paid rent and gas charges fortnightly, raised occasionally. The Herdmans provided a shop with fair prices and a dispensary. Workers paid one penny per week in the early days, rising to sixpence in the 1940s, towards healthcare, while the mill 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 had its own fire service and fire engine.

Due to alterations and extensions to this house and those in the adjoining terrace, the small-scale houses have lost considerable 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.