124 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 south end of Sion Mills Conservation Area. The house is rectangular on plan with rear return to east, with lean-to extension, and canopy over entrance to south. The west elevation faces onto the road and alongside HB10/07/008A, forms a symmetrical front.

Roof is clay tiled, pitched and slightly sprocketed, angled 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. Windows are irregularly spaced and sized, all timber framed except in the extension to the rear; painted concrete sills

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

North gable is completely abutted by No.122 (HB10/07/008A).

South elevation contains four-panelled timber entrance door with bolection mouldings and lion’s head knocker door at left, surmounted by a timber-framed canopy with timber squinches and clay tile roof; accessed by a concrete step. Attic level has decorative timber framing and two raised timber bands running horizontally above and below the window. There are six irregularly spaced windows, including one at attic level; all 1/1 sash with horns with exception of one UPVC window contained at extension to east end. The base of a former greenhouse seen on the 1st survey photograph (c. 1975) remains and is now used as a flowerbed.

Rear (east) elevation features a lean-to extension on the end of the return gable. Brown UPVC windows on extension. Red brick chimneystack to return; chimneybreast visible on gable wall. Painted brick wall forms boundary to neighbouring back yard. Enclosed yard in painted roughcast to match walls.

There is a garage to south-west of the house, built in similar style with pitched and clay tile roof and painted roughcast doors. Timber doors on north elevation.

Setting:
The house is set slightly back from the Melmount Road at the southern end of the Sion Mills Conservation Area. It is separated from the road by a lawn and low cut stone wall having an access gap with two low steps shared between both houses. Large rectangular garden to rear.

Roof: Pitched clay tiled
Walling: Painted roughcast and decorative timber frames
Windows: Timber, mainly one over one sash with horns
Rainwater goods: Cast iron gutters and downpipes

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 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.122, was also built the same year, but has separate tenancy; both properties were leased from E. T. Herdman.

For those who did live in the village, the Herdman’s social experiment in Sion Mills was along the lines of Robert Owen’s in New Lanark. (Ferguson, p.91). “Until the 1960s, the Mill trained and employed people to cover all the necessary trades needed to maintain and repair the village houses and surround as well as the Mill and its machinery, and the waterpower system. The householders were charged for rent and gas, paid per fortnight and raised occasionally. Over the early years the Herdmans provided a shop with very good fair prices and a dispensary. Workers paid a small payment from their wages, one penny per week in the early days – 6d. in the 1940s – towards health care and the Mill paid a Doctor and a mill nurse. The Herdmans also built a Doctor’s house and surgery in the Mill Lane at the end of the [nineteenth] century.”(Ferguson, p.95). 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 in the 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.
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
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
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.