22 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

22 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay, late-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1883 as part of the planned expansion of Bessbrook village. The architect is unknown, though the work may be attributed to John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881, who was also responsible for extending the mill. The house is one of twenty-three similar dwellings forming the eastern terrace of College Square, which together with Bessbrook Town Hall to the southeast forms a formally planned late-Victorian square of 53 mill workers' dwellings in total. These are arranged on three sides — east, north and west — around a central bowling green, playground and lawn, with the square primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast.

Architectural Description

The building takes an L-plan form facing southwest, with a single-storey L-plan rear return. Walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality local granite, also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool), with stepped red brick dressings to the jambs, painted stone sills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. The roof is pitched with fibre cement tiles and roll-top black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest, rebuilt in rustic red brick, carries two terracotta clay pots. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, though the front elevation retains metal guttering.

The front elevation faces southwest, is near-symmetrical, and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. It has a regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings, all fitted with wood-effect top-opening uPVC casement windows. A concrete path leads from a hooped painted metal gate — hung on slim posts and set in a concrete dwarf wall with pierced quatrefoil blocks — to a uPVC front door with a square-headed fanlight above.

To the northwest the building is attached to No. 23 College Square East, and to the southeast to No. 21 College Square East. Access to the rear northeast elevation is limited, but where visible it shows an L-plan single-storey flat-roofed rear return projecting into the rear yard, a single uPVC casement window at first-floor level to the centre of the elevation, and original stone walling at first-floor level. The rear yard is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone boundary walling with a painted planked timber door opening onto a wide rear access route. There is a single-storey flat-roofed outbuilding at the southern corner of the yard.

The building retains its overall character and proportions despite the replacement of the original natural slate roof with fibre cement tiles, the loss of the original front door and front railings, and the installation of uPVC windows and rainwater goods.

Materials: Newry Granodiorite walling; fibre cement roof tiles; uPVC casement windows; metal and uPVC rainwater goods.

Setting

No. 22 forms part of the east terrace of College Square, itself a planned arrangement of 53 mill workers' dwellings forming a formal three-sided square. 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. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to respect the subtle relief of the site, while the western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. Rear yards are enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with square-headed doorways onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are generally much altered, while front facades along the eastern terrace are nearly uniform.

The central area of the square is divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and green, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at its northwest boundary; this bowling green was added in 1911. To the southeast is a lawn also enclosed by hooped metal railings. In the centre is an open children's playground containing 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," with an inscription on the opposite side noting that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently moved to this location from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to its acquisition by the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

The northern terrace of the square comprises only twelve houses and, while similar in style, is distinctly larger, being two-and-a-half storeys. College Square was named after the primary school on its west side, erected in 1849. The earlier Charlemont Square (laid out 1862–1866) lies to the west.

Historical Context

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761, when a Mr John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site. The place was then simply known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (the "Brook"). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records very few buildings at Bessbrook — chiefly Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it is now known 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 factory workers. Richardson later explained that he "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the Bessbrook site for its water power, its surrounding agricultural population, and its proximity to flax cultivation. 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's philanthropic aims led him to bring poor, unqualified and destitute people from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to improve their circumstances. He famously established the village without the "Three Ps" — no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for police — providing instead recreational and educational facilities at the Institute (the Town Hall), well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea and cocoa to 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 in 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 boomed 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 him the remainder of the Camlough Estate in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house 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.

College Square was laid out around 1883 in response to further expansion of Richardson's business. The mid-1880s were described in the Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide as "a period of intense building activity in the village" during which "the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established." The factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The terraces along College Square were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations regarding the keeping of pigs and fowl (confined to a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden, not in the living quarters or yard), and were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 22 College Square East was constructed around 1883. Annual Revisions record it as initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Joseph Rafferty, valued at £5 10 shillings, at which it remained until the 1950s. The occupancy changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the occupant as William Frame, a commercial clerk employed at Richardson's factory, and described the building as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the building remained valued at £5 10 shillings and was occupied by a Mr Thomas Meeke.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition. During the Second World War its workers supplied cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the College Square housing until the 1960s, when the dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms; the majority were purchased by a Mr George Preston around 1969. The sale of property was driven by the post-war decline in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 22 was purchased outright by Thomas Meeke in 1968, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) its rateable value had risen to £8.

No. 22 College Square East was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's significance as a planned mill village. 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 of 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." College Square is thus internationally significant as part of one of the earliest planned mill villages in the British Isles, contemporary with — and in some respects preceding — those celebrated English examples.