ONE OF Northern Ireland’s most notable buildings has suffered extensive fire damage in a weekend blaze.
The fire at the Herdmans Mill centre in Sion Mills, Co Tyrone, started in early on Saturday morning. It was extinguished by firefighters but it reignited later and burned for several hours before the second fire was spotted.
Herdmans Mill was built in 1835 by brothers James, John and George Herdman from Belfast to create “a moral, temperate, educated, non-sectarian community” around a flax- spinning business in Sion Mills.
At its height, the mill employed 1,500, but in 2004, following 170 years of flax-spinning, a final 300 redundancies brought about the mill’s closure.
Since then the Sion Mills Buildings Preservation Trust has maintained the mill and other surrounding historic buildings. Trust spokeswoman Celia Ferguson said it was awful to have to watch the fires.
“The most important industrial building in Ireland has been very badly damaged by fire.”
Dr Anthony McCann, who lectures in heritage studies at the University of Ulster, said now more than ever there was a need to focus “on the full restoration of this vitally important site”.
The North's Minister for the Environment Alex Attwood said his officials would work with the trust to save the mill, which had featured in the BBC programme Restoration.