2 Alexandra Place,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Attached two-bay one-and-a-half-storey house, built c.1880, located to the west side of Melmount Road. Rectangular-on-plan with one-and-a-half-storey pitched extension to west, added c.2000.

Roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles over replacement uPVC deep overhanging eaves; decorative timber bargeboards; brick corbelled chimneystacks with replacement clay pots. Walls are painted roughcast with smooth platband over smooth banded plinth. Windows are replacement square-headed uPVC casements in smooth rendered architraves; painted masonry sills.

Principal elevation faces east and contains, at left (central), gabled porch (shared with HB10/07/009A); single window at right; porch east gable is open with ogee opening framed by smooth rendered banding. Entrance at right (contained in party wall) is via replacement uPVC glazed door. Single dormer at right.

South gable is abutted by HB10/07/009A.

West elevation is abutted by extension; west gable contains replacement UPVC door at left; window at right; single window at left at attic. North elevation contains two windows at each floor. South elevation is blank.

North gable contains two windows at first floor.

House is directly accessed from street at east. Rroughcast rendered boundary wall with concrete coping encloses yard to east and south; access through replacement timber gate.

Roof Natural slate
Walling Roughcast
Windows Replacement square-headed uPVC casements
RWG Replacement uPVC rainwater goods

Historical information

The building is half of a semi-detached pair of houses at the head of a terrace dating from c.1880 and numbered 1 and 2. The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation c.1980.

The house is first shown on the third edition OS map of 1905 Valuation Revisions note that, ‘Houses [are] in Progress…1879’.Nos 1 & 2 have a larger valuation (and are indeed bigger buildings), being valued at £3 5s. They are both listed as ‘house, office and small garden’.

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.

“Dwellings both single and two storey were built by the Herdman Family to house the new generation of flax mill workers of that day, who by 1853 amounted to ‘upwards of 500 in number.’ The cottages are part of a planned layout similar to the work of Sir Titus Salt at Saltair…. (Dept. Of the Environment, p.10).

“The village was originally built consisting of simple, but well-built, one-storey terraced cottages to house the workers and to save them having to walk miles to work…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 19th century. The village had its own fire service and fire engine.” (Ferguson, p.91, 95).

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)
7. PRONI VAL/12/E/182/1 -Town Plan of Sion Mills(1866-1898)
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/42/1A-F -Valuation Revisions (1860-1923)

Secondary Sources

1. Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland). “Sion Mills Conservation Area.” Belfast: H.M.S.O., 1977.
2. 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.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Semi-detached one-and-a-half-storey house, built c.1880 as worker's housing for the local herdmans's Mill; located to the west side of Melmount Road. Together with HB10/07/009A the houses are constructed on a symmetrical plan about a central porch. Due to alterations and extensions to this house and those in the adjoining terrace these small scale houses have lost a considerable amount of their original architectural character both individually and as a group. Their general massing and their historic interest mean that they still contribute to Sion Mills Conservation Area

General comments

This record has been renumbered it was previously recorded with nos 1 & 3 - 20 Alexandra Place as HB10/07/009