9 College Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 9 College Square North is a modest two-storey, two-bay terraced dwelling built in approximately 1890 as workers' housing for the Bessbrook Spinning Company. It is constructed of locally quarried Newry Granodiorite and is one of twelve similar houses forming the northern terrace of College Square. The architect is unknown, though the work may be attributable to John Hardy, civil engineer and company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company from 1881. The building currently retains its original use as a terraced house. The listing extends to the house, its gate, railings, and boundary walling.

Architectural Character

The front elevation faces southeast and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. It is near-symmetrical, with a regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level aligned directly above the ground-floor openings. All windows are fitted with top-opening uPVC casements. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite to the principal facade, with stepped red brick dressings to door and window jambs, stone sills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings to doors and windows. The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. There are two rectangular-section red brick chimneys: the one to the southwest carries four terracotta clay pots; the one to the northeast has been rebuilt in rustic red brick. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above — though this decorative eaves course to the front facade of all dwellings along College Square North is now masked by modern electrical wiring. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, comprising half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The front door is a painted panelled timber door with two glazed sections to its upper half, brass furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. A window sits to the southwest side of the door. The modest front yard is paved, with a central planting area, and is enclosed by a red brick dwarf wall topped with hooped galvanised metal railings. A similar foot gate is hung on slim posts to the northeast, with a paved path leading from the gate to the front door.

The building is in an L-plan form, with a two-storey rear return added in approximately 1997. To the southwest it is attached to No. 8 College Square North, and to the northeast to No. 10 College Square North.

Rear and Side Elevations

The rear elevation faces northwest. The two-storey rear return at the northeast projects northwest to the site boundary. To the southwest, the single reduced bay of the rear elevation has original stone walling with altered openings: a uPVC window at first-floor level with red brick jambs and a slim concrete sill, and a painted timber door with glazing at ground-floor level under a concrete head. The rear return has a uPVC window to its southwest side at first-floor level with a uPVC glazed door directly below at ground level, and uPVC casement windows to the ground and first floors on the northwest side of the rear return. No openings are visible to the northeast side of the rear return. A boiler and flue abut the northwest end of the rear return and are situated in the shared rear access route. The rear concrete yard to the southwest has a flush timber door leading from the rear access route. Generally, the rear elevation has a rough-cast cement render finish with uPVC casement windows and slim concrete cills.

Alterations and Detractors

The two-storey rear return was added in approximately 1997. A large rendered extension, uPVC windows throughout, and modern finishes detract somewhat from the building's character and heritage value.

Setting and Group Value

No. 9 College Square North forms part of College Square, a formally planned late-Victorian square consisting of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged on three sides — north, east, and west — around a central area now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. This central area includes a bowling pavilion and green to the northwest, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at its northwest boundary; a lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings to the southeast; and an open children's playground in the centre. The bowling green was added in 1911. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath with a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are generally much altered.

The eastern terrace comprises 23 dwellings, initially stepped in groups of six to follow the subtle relief of the site, and terminates at its southeastern end with the former village Institute building (the old Town Hall). The western terrace comprises 18 dwellings, for the most part arranged in pairs and built in a similar style but with some significant differences in detailing; the former school building is located at the southeastern end of this terrace. The northern terrace — of which No. 9 forms part — is the shortest, comprising only 12 houses, but these are distinctly larger two-storey buildings with steeply pitched roofs.

The children's playground in the central area of the square contains three granite monuments. One records: "erected A.D. 1911 in respectful memory of George Wright, Head Mason. John McClelland, Head Millwright. Michael Boyle, Flax Buyer. Who each faithfully served the Bessbrook firm for nearly 50 years. Also Robert Ross, Mill Manager. Austin Kennedy, Rougher." A second records: "The garden in memory of James N. Richardson is arranged by his wife as a playground for the children of Bessbrook whom he loved November 1927"; the inscription to the opposite side records that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, formerly in the grounds of Bessbrook Mill and recently moved to its current location, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd. in 1878.

No. 9 College Square North forms part of the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983.

Historical Context

The village of Bessbrook traces its origins to 1761, when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records few buildings at the site beyond 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, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson, himself a member of the Religious Society of Friends, was influenced by the planning work of the American Quaker William Penn, who had been responsible for the development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. In his own words, Richardson "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the Bessbrook site for its water power, local flax cultivation, and rural character. He established Bessbrook as a social experiment — a model village in which his workers could live and work in good conditions — and is recorded as having brought the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside, hoping to encourage them to improve themselves and leave old habits behind.

Bessbrook is often referred to 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, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house at Bessbrook. Police were not stationed at the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner 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 greatly enlarged his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making him the principal employer and landowner 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, with the number of houses rising from 73 to 296.

College Square was laid out in stages between approximately 1874 and 1890 in response to the continued expansion of Richardson's business. The mid-1880s were recorded as a period of intense building activity in the village, with the earlier ideals of the plan re-established through the construction of College Square. Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, using Newry Granodiorite from a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite was used in the construction of most buildings at Bessbrook and is of sufficiently high quality to have been used in the building of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool. The Annual Revisions record that Nos. 1–12 College Square North were erected in approximately 1890 and were the last row along the square to be laid out.

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 stipulations regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs — requiring that these be kept in a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden rather than in the family quarters or yard — and were also placed under obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 9 College Square North was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Thomas Malcolmson and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed with great frequency over the following decades. Under the 1911 Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by Robert Martin, a tenter at Richardson's mill; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five inhabited rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the building remained valued at £5 and 10 shillings and was occupied by a Mr. Thomas Colligan. A Mr. Ernest Blakely occupied the house in approximately 1954 and continued to reside there until at least the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), at which time the total rateable value stood at £8.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international fame. During the Second World War, mill workers were tasked with supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing along College Square until the 1960s, when the dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms, a process necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market that foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972.

The carefully planned development of Bessbrook, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, is considered to have influenced the design of the famous English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Both College Square and the earlier Charlemont Square could be considered internationally important as part of one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s.

No. 9 College Square North was listed in 1980 and was included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area upon its designation in 1983.