Sion Mills (Former) Elementary School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A detached symmetrical two-bay stone former primary school, dated 1879 and located on the west side of Melmount Road at the north end of Sion Mills Conservation Area. The school is T-shaped on plan (tail of the ‘T’ consists of a road-facing double-pile gabled hall) with small return and modern extension to rear and single storey hipped-roof entrance bays to either side.

Roof is pitched natural slate with angled clay ridge tiles and ventilation stacks on leaded plinth to ridges; tall brick chimney to rear and further brick chimney to south gable. Decorative painted timber bargeboards to principal gables having carved timber brackets and drop finials. Half-round cast-iron gutters and box downpipes over exposed rafter tails; painted cast-iron water spout to principal elevation. Walling is uncoursed squared rubble (built to courses at porches) over a chamfered stone plinth and having brick quoins; wide brick eaves band with dentil detail extending to window surround. Rear elevation and extension are painted roughcast. Window openings are segmental-headed (unless otherwise stated), with painted masonry sills; all openings have chamfered brick surrounds with moulded stone imposts and keystones, except those to rear, which are plainly detailed. Multi-pane replacement timber casements throughout.

Principal elevation faces east and is gabled M-profile with porches slightly recessed to either side. Projecting datestone (“Sion Mills / Public Elementary / School / 1879”) is affixed to centre (downpipe passes through centre). Each gable has a triple round-headed window opening (central opening taller) with shared sill on masonry corbels. Each porch has a round-headed door opening containing a replacement diagonally-sheeted timber door with strap hinges accessed by a stone step. Side elevation of each porch has a pair of square-headed windows with shared brick surround and sill; rear elevation blank.

South elevation is abutted by the porch at right; rear section projects and is roughcast. Hall section is eight windows wide. Rear section is gabled and has two windows to gable.

Rear elevation is abutted by an extension to right and has a return to left of centre. Exposed original elevation has two windows to right of return, three to left; return is blank with the exception of a small square window to rear.

North elevation is detailed as south, with the exception of rear block, which is four windows wide.

Setting:
The former school is set back from the road and surrounded by tarmac hardstandings (formerly schoolyard), with roughcast former toilet block at north-west, all surrounded by a rubblestone boundary wall with soldier coping. It is accessed from the road to east via a painted wrought-iron pedestrian gate supported on tooled dressed stone piers. Modern vehicular gates to rear. Immediately to south is Sion Mills Presbyterian Church (HB10/07/003).

Roof: Pitched natural slate
Walling: Part squared rubble stone, part roughcast
Windows: Replacement timber casements
RWG: Half-round cast-iron gutters

Historical information

Sion Mills was a company-owned town established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill, and was run by the Herdman family as a model village for their workers and village maintenance staff, who all had an option for healthcare, until the village was privatised in the mid 1960s when the mills needed to raise capital during a slump in the linen industry.

The school building is dated 1879, according to a prominent inscription: “Sion Mills Public Elementary School 1879.” The schoolhouse is first shown on the third edition of the OS Map of 1905, captioned “School.” Listed under exemptions as the male and female National School house, the building is valued at £25.

Rowan describes it with other buildings of Sion Mills: “The wide grass verges and tree-lined road provide an attractive setting for more half-timbered work by Unsworth: ... The Public Elementary Schools of 1879 are double-gabled, with the grouped round-headed windows that Thomas Turner so often used.” (Rowan, p.488).

In their tour in Ireland (1843), Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Hall wrote of an earlier school and the general environment of the village: “But this system of social order and social industry is not, as we have said the only advantage enjoyed at Sion Mills.... A school is established, and to the Sunday-school the Messrs. Herdman themselves attend, taking the greatest interest in the educational progress of their workpeople, and distributing motives to improvement, lavishly and judiciously. Nor are they behind London in the idea, that ‘the people’ may derive benefit from the introduction of more refined tastes into the business of everyday life. The traveller’s ear is refreshed, if he pass along during the long evenings of winter, or the bright cheerful ones of summer, by the music of a full band and instead of the saddened hearts and saddened features he has been led to suppose inseparable from the crowded factory, he hears a chorus of cheerful voices, or the echoes of dancing feet” (Scott).

References:

Primary

1. PRONI OS/6/6/10/1 -First Edition OS Map (1832-33)
2. PRONI OS/6/6/10/2 Second Edition OS Map (1855)
3. PRONI OS/6/6/10/3 Third Edition OS Map (1905)
4. PRONI VAL/12/E/182/1 Town Plan of Sion Mills (1866-1898)
5. PRONI VAL/12/B/42/1A-F Valuation Revisions (1860-1923)
6. PRONI VAL/2A/6/9A Griffith’s Valuation (1858)
7. Montgomery, William. “Map of Strabane, 1840.” In Ferguson, Celia, ed. “The Herdmans and Sion Mills, 1835-2005: Book One – The Early Years: A Collection of Letters, Photographs & Extracts from Documents and Books of Interest.” (Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone: Sion Mills Building Preservation Trust, 2005), p.0.

Secondary Sources

1. “1835 to 1935 At the Works of Herdmans Limited, Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone.” Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone: Self-published, 1935.
2. Bence-Jones, Mark. “A Guide to Irish Country Houses.” Second Revised Edition. London: Constable and Robinson, 1990.
3. Dixon, Hugh. “An Introduction to Ulster Architecture.” Second Edition. (Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2008.), p.184.
4. Dean, J. A. K. “The Gate Lodges of Ulster: A Gazetteer.” (Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1994.), p.184.
5. Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland). “Sion Mills Conservation Area.” Belfast: H.M.S.O., 1977.
6. Herdman, Rex. “Recollections of Rex Herdman.” In Ferguson, Celia, ed. “The Herdmans and Sion Mills, 1835-2005: Book One – The Early Years: A Collection of Letters, Photographs & Extracts from Documents and Books of Interest.” (Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone: Sion Mills Building Preservation Trust, 2005.), p.123.
7. Ferguson, Celia, ed. “The Herdmans and Sion Mills, 1835-2005: Book One – The Early Years: A Collection of Letters, Photographs & Extracts from Documents and Books of Interest.” Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone: Sion Mills Building Preservation Trust, 2005.
8. Kennedy, Michael G. “By the Banks of the Mourne: A History of Strabane.” Strabane, Co. Tyrone: Strabane Historical Society, 1996.
9. McEvoy, John. “Statistical Survey of the County of Tyrone with Observations on the Means of Improvements; Drawn Up in the Years 1801, and 1802, For the Consideration, and Under the Direction of The Dublin Society.” (Dublin: Graisbery and Campbell, 1802. Reprinted as McEvoy, John. “County of Tyrone, 1802: A Statistical Survey.” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1991), p.172.
10. McCutcheon, W.A. “The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland.” (London: HMSO, 1980), p.40-41.
11. Mitchell, C. J. Haldane. “Omagh: Paintings and Stories from the Seat of the Chiefs.” Donaghadee, Co. Down, Cottage Publications, 2000.
12. Rowan, Alistair. “North West Ulster: Londonderry, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Tyrone.” Buildings of Ireland Series. Dublin: Penguin Books, 1979.
13. Rynne, Colin. “Industrial Ireland 1730-1930: An Archaeology.” (Cork: The Collins Press, 2006.), p.40-41.
14. Scott, Michael, ed. “Hall’s Ireland: Mr & Mrs Hall’s Tour of 1840” London: Sphere, 1984.
15. “Sion House, Strabane.” “The Irish Builder.” 4 December 1884.
16. Williams, Jeremy. “Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921: A Companion Guide.” Dublin: Irish Academic Press Ltd, 1994.
17. Young, Robert Magill “Belfast and the Province of Ulster in the Twentieth Century.” Pike's New Century Series, ed. W. T. Pike. (Brighton : W. T. Pike, 1909.), p.273.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

An attractively detailed former elementary school in a Picturesque style, built 1879 and located at the north end of the Sion Mills Conservation Area. The composition is symmetrical, with double-gable form containing a twin hall layout contained within a principal M-profile elevation of rubble stone and accessed by porches on either side. Recent refurbishment has been sympathetically carried out with unobtrusive extension to rear, and the school remains a prominent historic feature in the village streetscape. Although no longer in use as a school, the building continues to perform an important social function within the village as achurch hall.