28 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

28 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of one of the most historically significant planned industrial villages in the British Isles. The listing covers the house itself together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The house is L-plan in form, facing southwest, with a single-storey flat-roofed rear return. The principal walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate — with red brick dressings. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though these have largely been squared off with bands of painted smooth cement render to the surrounds. The roof is pitched, finished in fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the northwest with a single terracotta clay pot. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are generally cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, with some uPVC replacements to the northeast elevation and rear return.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace, which is set slightly back from the larger shop buildings at its southeastern end. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth rendered dwarf walling topped with hooped metal railings, with a matching painted metal foot gate to the southeast. A paved path leads from the gate to a panelled painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade. The door has two glazed panels to its top half, painted metal furniture, and a rectangular fanlight above. There is a single window to the northwest side at ground floor level. At first floor level, two windows sit in line with the main entrance door below. Windows throughout are generally double-hung sliding timber sash with window horns and exposed sash boxes.

Northwest Elevation

The building is attached on the northwest to No. 29 Charlemont Square East.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast and is enclosed by rock-faced random-coursed stone boundary walling to a concrete yard, accessed through a planked painted timber door from the rear access route. At ground floor level toward the southeast end of this elevation there is a wider-than-standard side-opening casement window with a replacement concrete cill. At first floor level, a double-hung sliding timber sash window sits centrally. From the northwest end of the rear facade, a single-storey rear return projects northeast to the yard boundary walling and has a flat felt-covered roof. The southeast side of this rear return has a panelled painted timber door with two glazed sections to the top half, a top-opening timber casement window to its right, and a separate boiler house to the right of that window, accessed from the yard through a painted planked timber door; the boiler house is set back and appears to incorporate an earlier outbuilding. The rear elevation has a smooth rendered finish with concrete cills and timber casement windows at ground floor level, while the original stone walling is retained at first floor level. The rear return has a smooth cement render finish and uPVC rainwater goods.

Southeast Elevation

The building is attached on the southeast to No. 27 Charlemont Square East.

Setting and Group Value

No. 28 forms part of Charlemont Square East, one arm of a formally planned square comprising 66 buildings in total — mill workers' dwellings and shops — arranged along east, north and west terraces around a central green, principally accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. No. 28 is one of twenty-seven similar two-storey houses within the eastern terrace; five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings occupy the southeastern end of the same terrace, with traditional shopfronts at ground floor level and dwellings above. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site.

Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped with hooped metal railings. To the rear, generally larger yards are enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with square-headed door openings onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes, while front facades remain nearly uniform along the east and west terraces.

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

Historical and Social Significance

Bessbrook's origins as a settlement date to 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on land then simply known as "The Green." The site was renamed Bessbrook in honour of Pollock's wife Elizabeth — known as Bess — and the nearby Camlough River. By the time of the first Ordnance Survey mapping in the 1830s, relatively little had been built at Bessbrook: the principal structures were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it is known today was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his workers. Richardson later wrote that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the site for its water power, its rural character, and the local cultivation of flax. His layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Richardson established Bessbrook as a deliberate social experiment. His philanthropic approach — described by Harrison as a "typical Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic expectation" — led him to bring the poor and destitute from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, aiming to encourage self-improvement. The village became known as a place without the "Three P's": no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police. In place of alcohol, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops in the square, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to maintain this 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.

The development of Charlemont Square was directly driven by the expansion of 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, and Richardson seized this opportunity to enlarge both his factory and his workforce considerably. In 1863 he became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company following the purchase of his brother's shares. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson both the principal employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses grew from 73 to 296.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate this influx of workers, and Brett describes it as the centrepiece of the new developments at Bessbrook. The architect is not known with certainty. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used throughout was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate; granite from the Bessbrook Quarry is of sufficiently high quality to have been used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

Charlemont Square does not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. In that year, Griffith's Valuation noted that Charlemont Square West — captioned "new row" — was the only completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied. The remaining buildings were completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions.

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 containing specific clauses: keeping fowl and pigs out of the family quarters and the yard (though a pigsty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden); and sending children to school until they were old enough to begin mill work.

History of No. 28 Specifically

No. 28 Charlemont Square East was constructed between 1862 and 1866. The Annual Revisions record that the house was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms. Mary Carolan, with a rateable value of £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed with some frequency over the following decades, though the valuation remained unchanged until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current layout. The 1911 Census of Ireland records that No. 28 was occupied by Patrick McKeown, whose entire family was employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company; the building return describes the house as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The McKeown family remained at No. 28 until 1945, when a Ms. Alice O'Hagan took possession of the house and continued to reside there until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand and gained international recognition. During the Second World War, mill workers were tasked with producing cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the Charlemont Square houses until the 1960s, when the dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. The sale of the properties was driven by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which preceded the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the mill building was occupied by the British Army. No. 28 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72).

No. 28 Charlemont Square East was listed in 1981 and included within 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. Around 1980, the house underwent extensive renovation including repointing of its stonework and the addition of cast iron rainwater goods. At the time of the most recent survey, the building continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, notwithstanding the addition of the single-storey flat-roofed rear extension and the replacement of the original roof slates and front door.

International Significance

Bessbrook is internationally recognised as one of the earliest planned mill villages in the world, with its development beginning in the 1840s predating the celebrated 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 across the world. No. 28 Charlemont Square East, as part of the Charlemont Square development, contributes directly to this outstanding legacy.