1 Mill Avenue, Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, BT82 9ET

Church Hall (Formerly St. Saviour's Church), Sion Mills, County Tyrone

This is a freestanding, single-cell, double-height, gable-fronted former church in the Tudoresque half-timbered style, built around 1895 to designs by the accomplished architect William F. Unsworth. It stands on a prominent corner site on the east side of Memount Road within the Sion Mills Conservation Area, and is now used as a community hall. The building is rectangular on plan.

Architectural Overview

The roof is a pitched tiled structure with timber eaves-brackets and bargeboards, and aluminium half-round rainwater goods. There is a redbrick chimneystack to the catslide outshot and a redbrick bellcote on the western end. The walls are finished in narrow-panelled applied half-timbering with rendered infill panels, set over a high squared rock-faced uncoursed sandstone plinth; sandstone buttresses are placed at regular intervals, with angle buttresses at the west end.

The main windows throughout the principal block are dipartite cusped-headed leaded lattice lights set within square-headed timber frames, all fitted with secondary glazing. Windows to the projecting elements are divided by a single timber transom and mullion and have replacement leaded glazing. A continuous painted lead-capped sill course runs throughout the building.

Principal Elevations and Plan Form

A gabled porch projects to the west, a small catslide outshot extends to the east, and a full-height gabled projection stands to the south.

The principal entrance elevation faces north and has four equally spaced windows, with the catslide outshot at the left end. The outshot has two windows to its north face and a replacement timber sheeted door to its left cheek, accessed by three pavioured steps.

The east gable has a quadripartite window detailed in the same manner as the others, with an external metal grille over it. The south elevation has a slightly projecting gabled right bay, with four windows to the main section and one window to the gable. The west gable features a diminished gabled extension with a central window, a transomed and mullioned window to the right cheek, and a hardwood sheeted door to the left cheek.

Setting

The former church sits slightly back from the road on an open plot, surrounded by pavioured perimeter paths. There is a lawn with a single-storey shed constructed in a similar style to the southeast. The site is bounded to the west by a low stone wall and to the north by a low red-brick wall with iron railings; red-brick gate piers with decorative concrete caps carry a timber gate with a metal knob. A painted timber pedestrian gate supported on red-brick piers provides access from the road to the north. The replacement church, the Church of the Good Shepherd, is situated to the southeast.

Historical Context

Sion Mills was a company-owned model village established by Herdman & Co., a flax-spinning mill, and was run by the Herdman family for their workers and village maintenance staff. Residents had access to healthcare as part of this arrangement. The village was privatised in the mid-1960s when the mills needed to raise capital during a slump in the linen industry.

The building first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905, captioned "St. Saviour's Church." It first appears in the Annual Revisions as a Parochial Hall in 1913, at a rateable value of £20. The building is owned by the Representatives of the Church Body and leased from Herdmans Ltd.

The church opened for worship in May 1895, though it was never consecrated. It served as a chapel-of-ease to the church at Urney but proved too small to be practical and was succeeded by the present Church of the Good Shepherd in 1909. A bible from St. Saviour's is preserved in the present church. Architectural historian Alistair Rowan noted the building among Unsworth's half-timbered work in the village, describing it as having "a red-brick bellcote." Despite some replacement fabric, the building's original proportions and key features have remained intact, and it retains group value with the other half-timbered buildings in the village designed by the same architect.