Historic North Westmill site up for sale

THE historic Herdmans’ Flax-Spinning Mill in Sion Mills is up for sale with Estate Agency O’Connor Kennedy and Turtle saying they will accept all offers for the huge 61.8 acres site on instruction from receivers BDO.
By The Newsroom
Published 11th Apr 2012, 13:27 BST

The former Herdmans’ Mill Complex is bigger than the Walled City of Londonderry and includes mixed use development lands, residences, historic factory buildings (part Listed and restored), sports fields a hydro electricity plant and an island on the River Mourne.

Prospective new owners will have the option of developing the site in three phases.

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Phase one (25.4 acres) includes planning submissions for 104 houses, playing fields and a pavilion; phase two (7.9 acres) is for the Old Mill Area and has submissions for housing, commercial/retail and community use; and phase three (28.5 acres) is subject to submissions for housing, business space, a hotel, and hydro electricity turbines which generate from the Mill Race.

O’Connor Kennedy Turtle refer to the iconic site’s proximity to Londonderry and Strabane and its scenic Mournside setting.

The agency also refers to short commute times to Londonderry, Omagh, Cookstown, Dungannon, Letterkenny and Ballybofey.

“The catchment within one hours drive has a population of c. 350,000,” states the agency. “This historic Mill Village is most important in architectural terms and an overall Master Plan comprising a mix of commercial, residential, leisure and recreational uses has been submitted to the Planning Service to reflect both the regeneration and environmental setting.”

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According to the Sion Mills Buildings Preservation Trust the Mill was built in 1835 by the brothers James, John and George Herdman from Belfast.

“Sion Mills was chosen as a rural area of high employment and with enormous waterpower. The Herdmans’ vision was to create a moral, God-fearing, temperate, educated, non-sectarian community around a flax-spinning business in the northwest of Ireland which was a prolific flax-growing area,” the Trust explains.

“They built a model village, a school, churches, recreational and sporting facilities and succeeding in creating a community where everyone, of both religious traditions, has lived, gone to school and worked together happily over the past 170 years and 5 generations of the Herdman family,” it adds.