2 Lakeview, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 2 Lakeview is a two-storey, three-bay, semi-detached Victorian dwelling built around 1875 to designs by an unknown architect. It is constructed of local Newry Granodiorite stone with painted lined cement render, and forms one half of a semi-detached pair. The building takes an L-plan form, facing south-east, and has a single-storey rear return and a two-storey narrowly projecting monopitched block to the rear yard.

EXTERIOR

The roof is hipped and covered in natural slate with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. Two rectangular chimneys, both finished in painted smooth cement render, carry buff clay pots. The projecting eaves are supported on paired decorative moulded timber corbels. Rainwater goods are generally metal, with aluminium ogee guttering discharging to circular-section cast iron downpipes; there is a rectangular hopper to the front.

The walling is finished in typically painted lined cement render with raised quoins and stone window cills. Openings are square-headed and fitted with 2/2 sliding timber sash windows with horns throughout.

The principal elevation faces south-west and is composed of a two-storey, three-bay block. To the south-west there is a two-storey, three-part canted bay window: the ground floor has three 2/2 sliding timber sash windows — a central window flanked by 1/1 sash windows to the canted sides — with continuous stone cills, and the first floor repeats the same arrangement. To the centre bay is a single-storey, hipped-roof side-entry porch with projecting eaves and moulded timber corbels. On the north-east side of the porch, a four-panel painted timber door opens onto a granite step; the door has a square-headed fanlight above and brass furniture. To the south-east side of the porch there is a fixed-light three-part window with two rectangular panels beneath the cill. First-floor openings on the main block are of reduced height.

The front elevation faces south-east towards Bessbrook Lake and is fronted by a modest front garden with a low granite verge. The garden is gravelled to the south-west and paved to the north-east. A shared gravelled access road runs from Prospect Place at the north-east end to the front of No. 4 at the south-west end.

The south-west elevation has limited access but, where visible, consists of a two-storey hipped-roof block facing the north-east gable of No. 3 Lakeview, the two houses being separated by a shared alley that leads to their respective rear gardens. The alley is closed at its south-east end by a set of timber gates. This elevation has a painted lined cement render finish with raised quoins and no visible window openings.

The north-west (rear) elevation also has limited access but, where visible, consists of a two-storey, three-bay hipped-roof block fronted by the lower two-storey narrowly projecting monopitched block to the centre bay. This projecting block has red brick quoins and a small window visible at first-floor level. To the north-east there is a single-storey pitched-roof rear return. A blocked window opening in the north-east wall of this return now faces north-west into the rear yard of No. 1, and retains red brick jambs and a gauged red brick head. The north-east wall of the single-storey return is finished in limewash over stone rubble. The central projecting block is flanked by equally spaced 2/2 sliding timber sash windows at first-floor level; the window to the north-east has a diminutive 1/1 sliding timber sash to its south-west. The rear walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite, with smooth cement render to window surrounds, and is flush with the rear elevation of No. 1 Lakeview to the north-east.

The north-east elevation is the party wall, attached to No. 1 Lakeview.

SETTING

No. 2 Lakeview is the last of four houses collectively known as Lakeview — two pairs of semi-detached dwellings, all facing south-east towards Bessbrook Lake, a former mill pond associated with Bessbrook Mill. No. 2 is attached to No. 1 Lakeview to the north-east, which is the earlier but similar companion house. Nos 3 and 4 Lakeview, which stand to the south-west, are similar in style but are two-and-a-half-storey dwellings with gables and some significant differences in detailing. Together, the four houses form an important group in the centre of the village alongside the former shop and Quaker meeting house.

All four dwellings share access from Prospect Place to the north-east via a gravelled road that begins at a set of painted metal vehicular gates. These gates are composed of vertical iron bars with ball finials, hung on slim dressed granite pillars with pyramidal caps, and flanked by matching pedestrian gates and railings with spearhead finials. The individual gardens, set mainly to lawn with mature shrubs and trees, face south-east and are enclosed by stone walling at their south-eastern extent, running down towards Bessbrook Lake.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

No. 2 Lakeview is of considerable historical and social interest as part of the early planned mill village of Bessbrook. The village's origins lie in 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a John Pollock, and the site — then known simply as "The Green" — was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, when the first edition Ordnance Survey map was produced, very little had been built at Bessbrook: the principal structures depicted were Mount Caulfield House, the residence of the Nicholson family, along with several thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it is known today was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later recorded that he had a great aversion to being responsible for a factory population in a large town, and so chose a rural location near Newry with water power, a dense local population and an established tradition of flax cultivation in the surrounding countryside. He was also influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning and developing Philadelphia in the late 17th century, and his approach combined pragmatic commercial aims with a distinctly philanthropic character. He brought the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement and the abandonment of old habits.

Bessbrook was laid out in phases, beginning with Fountain Street in the 1840s. The architect responsible for the majority of the village's housing is not known, though C. E. B. Brett has suggested that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in Bessbrook during the 1860s, possibly limited to the expansion of the mill buildings.

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

Bessbrook was established as a social experiment and is famously known as a village without the "Three P's": Richardson stipulated that there would be no public house and no pawn shop in the settlement, and therefore no need for police to be stationed there. In exchange, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops at Nos 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and arranged for milk, tea and cocoa to be distributed to mill workers. The strategy proved effective: the majority of the population voted to preserve the ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house at Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

While most of the housing built during this period was intended for factory workers, the four Lakeview houses were occupied by members of Bessbrook's professional classes, with recorded occupants including linen merchants, doctors and senior mill managers. No. 2 Lakeview is specifically of interest as an example of a house built for the middling ranks of this group — mill managers and professional people.

Nos 3 and 4 Lakeview were built between 1861 and 1866, but No. 2 was not erected until around 1875, making it the last of the four Lakeview houses to be built. It was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in that year, with a total rateable value of £25, and noted as leased to a Mr James Fennell by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. Fennell remained at No. 2 until around 1884, when the house passed to William J. Wonfer, a manager at Richardson's mill. Around the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by Edward Jeffers, described in the Ulster Town Directories as a "Fancy Linen Draper" with commercial premises at Jocelyn Gardens in Belfast. The 1901 Census of Ireland classified No. 2 Lakeview as a first-class dwelling containing 12 rooms.

The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 shows the building in its current layout, though the original rear outbuildings had by then been replaced. The next prominent resident was Martin Arnott, a local textile designer and manager at Richardson's mill, who lived there from around 1911. In 1929 the house passed to John D. Thompson, who remained until around 1968. The rateable value of the property was increased to £31 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57).

Throughout the Second World War, mill workers at Bessbrook supplied cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in the village until the 1960s, when a post-war downturn in the local textile market led the company to begin selling its holdings; this economic decline foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 2 Lakeview was purchased outright from the Bessbrook Spinning Company around 1968 by a Ms Ellen Margaret Turismo, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72) its total rateable value stood at £42.

The house was listed in 1981 and was included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village and its distinct form and character. The Conservation Area Guide notes that the carefully planned development of Bessbrook — including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square — influenced the design of the English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, which in turn directly influenced town and country planning all over the world.

In 1994 No. 2 Lakeview underwent a renovation that included the fitting of new entrance doors and the installation of new sliding sash window frames throughout.