122 Melmount Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Semi-detached two bay two storey house built c.1905 situated on the east side of Melmount Road, at the southern end of Sion Mills Conservation Area. The house is rectangular on plan with rear return to east (further extended to east) and canopy over entrance to north. There is a further lean-to extension at the re-entrant angle of the return. The west elevation faces onto the road and, alongside HB10/07/008B, forms a symmetrical front with central chimneystack and shared dormer window.

Roof is clay tiled, pitched and slightly sprocketed, featuring clay ridge tiles, timber barge boards and boxed eaves; cast iron gutters and downpipes. Central red brick chimneystack with stepped cap and vertical banding, rear chimneyshaft on return is similar in style but smaller and for a single chimneypot. Timber framed and roughcast. Windows are irregularly spaced and sized, the majority have been replaced with UPVC frames; painted concrete sills.

Principal elevation faces west and features a rectangular bay window with timber-framed canopy; supported on decorative timber corbels, clay tiled roof; to its left is a small rectangular 1/1 sash with horns. Shared dormer window with pitched roof, tile hung cheeks and decorative timber framing to apex.

Left (north elevation) has the entrance door surmounted by a timber-framed canopy with timber squinches and clay tile roof, a four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings is accessed by a concrete step, to the right is a Victorian style lamp. This elevation has six irregularly spaced and sized windows, including one at attic level. The attic level features decorative timber framing and two raised timber bands running at head and sill level (that to head level is dentilled).

Rear (east) elevation has a red brick chimneystack on the return. Small UPVC skylight on rear pitch. Painted brick wall forms boundary to neighbouring back yard.

Setting:
The house is set back from the Melmount Road at the southern end of the Sion Mills Conservation Area. A gap in the wall with two low steps provides access to the house and its neighbour (HB10/07/008B). Large rectangular garden to rear.

Roof: Pitched clay tile
Walling: Timber framed and roughcast
Windows: Mainly replacement UPVC
RWG: Half-round cast-iron gutters

Historical information

Sion Mills was a company-owned town established by Herdman & Co., a flax spinning mill, 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 building is first shown on the third edition OS map of 1905, captioned “The Villas.”

It is added to the Valuation Revisions in 1905 as a “house,” which is initially vacant but becomes occupied in 1907. The lessor is E. T. Herdman and the property is valued at £10.10s. The adjoining property, No. 124, was also built the same year, but has separate tenancy; both properties were leased from E. T. Herdman.

In “Architecture in Ireland” (1994), Jeremy Williams writes: “The Halls in their tour of Ireland in 1843 praise the full employment given to 700 workers, 500 of them women, living in sound and comfortable cottages and going to Sunday school that the Herdman family themselves attended, and all in the verdant countryside….” (Williams, p.358).

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Hall continued: “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. Herman 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 traveler’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).

A July 1874 census recorded a total of 1008 persons living in the village, which consisted of 136 houses. Many of the villagers were lodgers, as the number of workers fluctuated; in March 1889, there were 1113 workers but by February 1897, the number had gone down to 1096 (Ferguson, p.93). Worker accommodation in the early twentieth century was detailed in the Herdman Diaries, which between 1900 and 1910 declared that “the problem of the supply of workers is influenced considerably by the available accommodation” (Ferguson, p.93).

In an effort to raise capital, the company sold off village houses sold off in early 1960s for prices ranging “from £60 for smallest to £120 for two-storey houses” (Herdman, p.123).

References:

Primary Sources

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)

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.
4. Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland). “Sion Mills Conservation Area.” Belfast: H.M.S.O., 1977.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Kennedy, Michael G. “By the Banks of the Mourne: A History of Strabane.” Strabane, Co. Tyrone: Strabane Historical Society, 1996.
8. 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.
9. McCutcheon, W.A. “The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland.” (London: HMSO, 1980), p.40-41.
10. Mitchell, C. J. Haldane. “Omagh: Paintings and Stories from the Seat of the Chiefs.” Donaghadee, Co. Down, Cottage Publications, 2000.
11. Rowan, Alistair. “North West Ulster: Londonderry, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Tyrone.” Buildings of Ireland Series. Dublin: Penguin Books, 1979.
1. Rynne, Colin. “Industrial Ireland 1730-1930: An Archaeology.” (Cork: The Collins Press, 2006.), p.40-41.
12. Scott, Michael, ed. “Hall’s Ireland: Mr & Mrs Hall’s Tour of 1840” London: Sphere, 1984.
13. “Sion House, Strabane.” “The Irish Builder.” 4 December 1884.
14. Williams, Jeremy. “Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921: A Companion Guide.” Dublin: Irish Academic Press Ltd, 1994.
15. 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.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This semi detached house is designed in the Arts and Crafts style located on the southern end of the model village of Sion Mills. Along with its listed neighbour they contribute to the quality of the Sion Mills Conservation Area. These early twentieth century houses create an attractive symmetrical front onto Melmount Road, enhanced by the low stone wall running north-south in front of them which also ties them as a group to the adjacent Church of the Good Shepherd and hall.