18 Alexandra Place,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Attached mid-terrace two-bay single-storey house, built c.1880, ninth from left in a terrace of eleven, located to the west side of Melmount Road. Rectangular-on-plan with two-storey flat-roofed extension to west, added c.1985.

Roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles over deep overhanging eaves; decorative timber bargeboards; roughcast chimney with concrete coping and replacement clay pots. Walls are painted roughcast over smooth banded plinth. Windows are timber casements in smooth rendered reveals; painted masonry sills.

Principal elevation faces east and contains, at right, square-headed opening containing replacement vertically-sheeted timber door with transom; single window at left; central gabled dormer to attic.

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

West elevation is abutted by extension containing two windows at first floor; abutted at ground floor by single-storey lean-to extension containing replacement door at centre; flanked by window at each side.

North gable is abutted by HB10/07/009S.

House is directly accessed from street at east. Roughcast boundary wall with concrete coping encloses yard to rear; access through vertically-sheeted timber gate.

Roof Natural slate
Walling Roughcast
Windows Replacement square-headed timber casements
RWG Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes

Historical information

The building is part of a terrace dating from c.1880. The ground floor return has been remodelled and extended to include first floor accommodation c.1985.

The building is first shown on the third edition OS map of 1905 as part of a terrace of houses along Alexandra Place. Valuation Revisions of 1879 note that, ‘Houses [are] in Progress…1879’. Nos 3-20 are valued at £2 10s and are listed as ‘house, office and yard’ with various occupiers.

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

Mid- terrace 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. 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 - 17 and also 19 & 20 Alexandra Place as HB10/07/009