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

5 Alexandra Place is a mid-terrace house built around 1880 as worker's housing for Herdman's Mill in Sion Mills. It is located on the west side of Melmount Road and forms part of a terrace of seven houses, occupying the third position from the left.

The house is a two-bay single-storey structure with a two-storey flat-roofed extension added to the west around 1985. 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 chimney is smooth rendered with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. The walls are painted roughcast over a smooth banded plinth. The guttering and downpipes are cast iron, with half-round gutters and round downpipes.

The principal elevation faces east and contains, on the right, a square-headed opening with smooth rendered architrave housing a replacement five-panelled timber door with glazed top lights. A single window is positioned at the left. Above these is a central gabled dormer to the attic, flanked on the right by a rooflight. The windows throughout are replacement square-headed uPVC casements set in smooth rendered architraves with painted masonry sills.

The west elevation has been substantially altered by the c.1985 extension and contains a single window at each floor and a square-headed uPVC door at ground floor left. The south and north gables abut neighbouring properties. The house is directly accessed from the street at the east. A roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses a rear yard, with access through a vertically-sheeted timber fence.

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 mill employed upwards of 500 workers. The village was originally built with simple but well-built one-storey terraced cottages, with dwellings constructed both single and two storey. The layout followed principles similar to Sir Titus Salt's work at Saltaire. Until the 1960s, the Herdmans maintained their own tradespeople to repair and maintain village houses and the mill machinery. Workers paid rent and gas charges fortnightly. The Herdmans also provided a shop, a dispensary where workers contributed one penny per week in the early days (sixpence in the 1940s), a doctor's house and surgery, and operated a fire service. 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. Despite this, their general massing and historic interest mean they still contribute to the Sion Mills Conservation Area. The building was first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905 as part of the terrace along Alexandra Place. Valuation Revisions of 1879 note that houses were in progress that year, with Nos 3–20 valued at £2 10s and listed as 'house, office and yard' with various occupiers.