12 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co. Armagh, BT35 7AF

12 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built around 1862 as part of the planned model village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The architect is unknown. The building forms part of Charlemont Square West, a formally designed terrace of twenty-five similar houses together with a larger two-storey-with-attic shop building at its southeastern end. These together make up the western side of Charlemont Square, a planned Victorian square of 66 buildings in total, arranged on three sides — east, west and north — around a central green, with primary access from Fountain Street to the southeast. The house sits within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983.

Historical and Social Context

Bessbrook's origins lie in 1761, when a John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then simply known as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook in honour of Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. Few buildings had been erected by the 1830s; the first edition Ordnance Survey map recorded little more than Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills on the site.

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 constructing housing for his factory workers. Richardson later explained that he had a strong aversion to responsibility for a factory population in a large town, and so sought out a country location near Newry with water power, a local population, and flax cultivation nearby. Development began with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s.

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. Richardson's philanthropic aims were central to the village's design: he sought to provide good living and working conditions for his employees, including people from the surrounding countryside who were poor, unqualified or destitute, in the hope of encouraging self-improvement. Bessbrook became widely known as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawnshop, and therefore no need for a police presence. In exchange, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at numbers 1 to 5 Charlemont Square East, and arranged for milk, tea and cocoa to be distributed to mill workers. The policy proved durable: the majority of the population voted to preserve it in the 1870s, and to this day no public house exists in Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863, Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when disruption to cotton supplies increased demand for linen. Richardson used the opportunity to enlarge his factory and expand his workforce considerably. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the village's principal employer and landowner by the mid-1860s. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate this influx of workers. It formed the centrepiece of the new development. The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 does not show the square, but construction had begun by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year 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 rest of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty. The architectural historian C. E. B. Brett suggested 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 limited to the mill buildings.

The Conservation Area Guide notes that Bessbrook's carefully planned development — including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square — influenced the design of the later 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 across the world. Bessbrook is therefore internationally significant as one of the earliest examples of a planned mill village.

Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs — these were not to be found in the living quarters or yard, though a pigsty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden. Tenants were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough to work in the mill.

History of No. 12 Specifically

No. 12 Charlemont Square West was constructed around 1862. The Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. John Webb, and valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupancy changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the building in its current layout. The 1911 Census of Ireland records the house as occupied by James Woods, a farm labourer whose family worked for the Bessbrook Spinning Company as linen spinners and reelers; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. The Woods family continued to reside there until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century, the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War, mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for uniforms. The company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals; the majority were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. The post-war downturn in the textile market ultimately led to the mill's closure in 1972, after which it was occupied by the British Army. No. 12 was purchased outright by Thomas Woods in 1970, and its valuation was raised to £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of 1956–72.

The building was listed in 1981. Around 1984 it underwent an extensive renovation, including repointing of the stonework, installation of new windows and entrance doors, and the addition of cast iron rainwater goods. A two-storey rear extension was added around 1995.

Architecture

The house is of rectangular plan form, facing northeast, with a large two-storey rear return added around 1995. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate and 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. Window and door openings have painted stone sills and stepped red brick surrounds, with replacement red brick surrounds to the openings. The roof is pitched, finished in fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest with a single terracotta clay pot. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The front elevation faces northeast and is near-symmetrical, sitting flush with the main terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by replacement red brick dwarf walling topped by modern hollow-tube painted metal railings with some metal scrollwork; a matching foot gate is hung on hollow-tube metal posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a six-panelled painted timber door positioned toward the southeast of the facade, with black iron door furniture and a square-headed fanlight above. There is a window to the northwest at ground floor level. The upper floor has two windows aligned with the ground floor openings. All windows to the front elevation are one-over-one double-hung sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes, maintaining a regular fenestration pattern across both floors.

The building is attached to No. 13 Charlemont Square West on the northwest and to No. 11 Charlemont Square West on the southeast.

The southwest-facing rear elevation was only partially accessible at the time of survey. Where visible, it shows a single-bay two-storey pitched-roof rear return projecting to the rear boundary at the southeast. This rear return is abutted on the northwest by a single-storey monopitched block extending southwest from the rear wall of the original dwelling. The monopitched block adjoins a smaller, lower flat-roofed block at the rear site boundary; a sheeted painted timber door on its southwest side provides access from the rear route to the dwelling. Both the monopitched and flat-roofed blocks have bituminous felt roof coverings. A uPVC oil tank is supported on modern walling and metal lintels above the flat-roofed block. The rear return has a fibre cement tile roof, uPVC fascia and soffit, and a single uPVC casement window at both first floor and ground floor level, both facing southwest. There is a further uPVC casement window at first floor level at the northwestern end of the rear facade, positioned above the monopitched block. The rear elevation generally has a painted rough-cast cement-rendered finish, uPVC rainwater goods, uPVC casement windows and painted concrete sills.

Setting

No. 12 forms part of a planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops comprising a formal square, with east, north and west terraces arranged around a central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces step 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 door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. Front facades are nearly uniform along the east and west terraces. Five larger buildings at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square West have 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 green is laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings, with established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast, and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in Bessbrook in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.