2 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

2 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house and shop, built between 1862 and 1866 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square, one of the most historically significant planned settlements in Ireland and internationally recognised as an early model mill village.

Historical and Social Context

Bessbrook's origins lie in 1761, when a John Pollock opened a woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known simply as "The Green." The village was renamed Bessbrook in honour of Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, when the first Ordnance Survey map was made, little had been built at Bessbrook beyond Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it exists today was effectively founded in 1845, when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased a derelict mill on the site. Richardson chose the location deliberately, later writing that he "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and selected a rural site near Newry with water power, a dense local population, and a surrounding district where flax was cultivated. He began building housing for his factory workers, starting with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s.

Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and his approach to the village was shaped by Quaker principles as well as a practical desire for good relations between employer and employees. His philanthropic outlook led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, in the hope of encouraging self-improvement. He provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops (including those at numbers 1 to 5 Charlemont Square East), and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. Bessbrook became famous as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police to be stationed there. The majority of the population voted to preserve these conditions in the 1870s, and to this day Bessbrook has no public house. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

Richardson's layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century. The architect of the majority of Bessbrook's housing is not known with certainty. Charles Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been confined to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces of Charlemont Square were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off. Richardson took advantage of this by greatly enlarging his factory and increasing his workforce. In 1863 he became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after purchasing his brother's shares. In 1865, Lord Charlemont sold him the remainder of the Camlough Estate, making Richardson both the principal employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the resulting influx of workers: between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement including stipulations about keeping fowl and pigs — these could be kept in a sty or run in the garden but not in the yard or family quarters — and binding them to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work. Each house came with a garden or yard of approximately one-eighth of an acre.

Charlemont Square was not yet shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had begun by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year noted that Charlemont Square West — then captioned "new row" — was the only completed side of the square, though all 26 of its buildings remained unoccupied. The rest of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

The stone used throughout Bessbrook is Newry Granodiorite, a high-quality local granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate. The same material was used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool.

Bessbrook is often cited as a precursor to the famous English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), all of which have directly influenced town and country planning worldwide. The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide specifically identifies Bessbrook's influence on these later settlements.

No. 2 Charlemont Square East was originally let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr John Wilson and valued at £15. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the building as occupied by Margaret Ann Crouch, who operated a grocery shop from the premises; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of eight rooms. By the 1920s the house and shop had passed to the Jackson family, who remained until the 1950s. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the building's rateable value remained at £15.

During the Second World War, the Bessbrook mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when properties began to be sold to private individuals and firms; the majority of houses along the square were purchased around 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer. The post-war downturn in the local textile market led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army.

In 1960, ownership of No. 2 passed to Amy Chambers and Patrick Shields, who converted the ground-floor shop into a chemist's. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the rateable value had been reduced to £12 and 10 shillings, and the building was at that time occupied by a Mr Robert Patterson. The building was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area when it was designated in 1983, in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village with a distinct and coherent form and character. Around 2002, the original rear return was demolished and replaced with the current two-storey pitched-roof return. At the time of the most recent survey, the building continued to be used as a pharmacy.

Architectural Description

The building follows a rectangular plan, facing southwest, with a two-storey pitched-roof rear return constructed around 2002. It is one of five similar two-and-a-half-storey buildings along the southeast end of the eastern terrace, each originally having a ground-floor shop with a dwelling above (the other four being numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5 Charlemont Square East). These five commercial buildings, together with twenty-seven smaller terraced dwellings to the northwest, make up the full eastern terrace of Charlemont Square: a formally designed square of 66 buildings in total, arranged on three sides around a central green, with principal access from Fountain Street to the southeast.

The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite with red brick dressings. Window and door openings have stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds, with gauged-brick cambered heads. The roof is covered in fibre cement sheeting with roll-top terracotta clay ridge tiles. There is a half-dormer window to the southwest elevation, and the replacement chimney to the northwest is rectangular in section, built in red brick, and carries four buff clay pots. The eaves project and are finished with a painted timber fascia and soffit. Rainwater goods are generally cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, except to the rear return where uPVC guttering has been used.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation sits directly on the public footpath and faces southwest. At the southeast end of the ground floor there is a panelled painted timber door with a glazed upper half, opening onto a single stone step and leading to the entrance hall of the private dwelling. This door has a modern galvanised metal grille fitted and a semicircular arched fanlight above with plain glazing. To its left (northwest), also at ground-floor level, is the painted timber shopfront for the pharmacy. The shopfront has a separate entrance at the northeast end of the facade: a panelled painted timber door with a glazed upper half and a square-headed fanlight, now fitted with modern painted metal safety shutters.

A narrowly projecting painted moulded timber signboard displaying "Bessbrook Pharmacy" runs above the shopfront, surmounted by a two-stage dentilated cornice. A large glazed panel sits below the signboard, set on stone dwarf walling. The entablature is supported by painted timber corbels and three pilasters with raised panels.

The facade has a near-regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level and a half-dormer at attic level. The windows are generally double-hung sliding timber sash with horizontal glazing bars and window horns.

Northwest Elevation

The building is attached at the northwest to No. 3 Charlemont Square East. The northwest elevation of the rear return is finished in smooth cement render.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast and is dominated by the large two-storey gabled rear return, which extends to the rear yard boundaries. The return is built in random-coursed rock-faced stone with square-headed stepped red brick door and window openings having concrete cills. The fenestration is irregular: there are two painted planked timber doors at ground-floor level of the return and two windows above — one top-opening timber casement with six panes at first-floor level and one three-pane timber fixed light corresponding to the internal staircase, both fitted with galvanised metal grilles. Rainwater goods to the rear are uPVC, with painted timber soffit and fascia.

Southeast Elevation

The building is attached at the southeast to No. 1 Charlemont Square East. The rear return abuts the mono-pitched extension of No. 1, with a single window above at first-floor level and smooth cement render to the remainder of the facade.

Setting

No. 2 Charlemont Square East forms part of a planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops comprising a formal square made up of East, North, and West terraces arranged around a central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath by a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The East and West terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. Each dwelling generally has a larger rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed doorway opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades are much altered, with various extensions of different shapes and sizes. Front facades are nearly uniform along the East and West terraces, with five larger buildings at the southeast end of Charlemont Square East — of which this building is one — and one at the southeast of Charlemont Square West, all generally having traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above.

The northern terrace is the shortest, comprising only eight houses, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central area of the square is laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings, with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast of the green and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting at Bessbrook in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.