25 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

25 Charlemont Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The listing extends to the house itself, together with its gate, railings, and yard walling.

The house is constructed in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate and also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool — with red brick dressings throughout. Painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds frame the gauged-brick cambered door and window openings. The front elevation faces southwest, is near-symmetrical, and sits flush with the main terrace. It features double-hung 1/1 timber sliding sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes at both ground and first floor levels, arranged in a regular pattern of two bays. The six-panelled painted timber front door sits to the southeast of the façade and is topped by a semi-circular glazed light and a rectangular fanlight, with black iron door furniture. The pitched roof is finished with natural slate and angled black clay ridge tiles; there is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the northwest with a single terracotta pot. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course, and rainwater is carried by uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes. The fibre cement rainwater goods noted in the materials record indicate some replacement of original fittings.

The front yard is modest in size, paved, and enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate on slim metal posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to the front door.

The building is attached to No. 26 Charlemont Square East on the northwest and to No. 24 on the southeast. To the rear, the northeast elevation is largely of roughcast cement render with timber top- or side-opening casement windows. A single-bay, two-storey rear return projects northeast into the rear yard; this return has a painted timber soffit and fascia and a painted flush timber back door on its northwest side. The rear yard is narrow and L-shaped, reduced to a single bay in width at its northwest extent. A planked painted timber door in smooth-rendered boundary walling gives access from the rear service route. A large two-storey rear return was added to the building in approximately 1984, giving the house an overall L-plan form. The current sliding sash window frames were installed in 1999. Original roof slates and internal fittings have been replaced.

No. 25 is one of twenty-seven similar houses which, together with five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings to the southeast, form the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square. The square as a whole comprises 66 buildings in total, arranged on three sides — east, north, and west — around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. The five larger buildings at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square East, and one at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square West, have traditional shop fronts at ground floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest, being only eight houses wide, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The rear of each dwelling is generally enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route, and rear façades across the square have been much altered with various extensions. The central green is now laid to lawn, enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees at its boundary. A children's playground to the southeast of the green 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.

The historical and social significance of the house can only be understood as part of the wider story of Bessbrook. The development of industry at the site dates from 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a John Pollock; the settlement was named Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, when the first edition Ordnance Survey map was produced, few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; the only significant structures depicted were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village of Bessbrook 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 at the site and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson, in his own words, had a great aversion to being responsible for a factory population in a large town, and so chose a country district near Newry with water power and a population skilled in flax cultivation. The village was established as a social experiment — a model village — where workers could live and work in contentment. Richardson's layout 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 outlook led him to recruit the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside, hoping to encourage self-improvement. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police — and in exchange Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops (located at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East), and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement 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 experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson took advantage of this by greatly enlarging his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson by the mid-1860s both the main employer and the principal 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 and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

The architect of the houses at Charlemont Square is not known with certainty. C. E. B. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at 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 by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. Charlemont Square was not depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year noted that Charlemont Square West (captioned "new row") was the only side of the square then completed, though its 26 buildings remained unoccupied. The remaining sides 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 stipulating, among other things, that fowl and pigs were not to be kept in the quarters occupied by the family or in the yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden. Tenants were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work. Each house possessed a garden or yard of approximately one eighth of an acre.

No. 25 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Thomas Barnes and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The 1911 Census of Ireland records the house as occupied by James McGaffin, employed as a damask tenter by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, and describes it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the house was occupied by the Cantrell family, who remained at the address until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international fame; during the Second World War, mill workers were tasked with supplying cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the Charlemont Square housing 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, in approximately 1970. The sale of property was necessitated by the post-war downturn 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. 25 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

No. 25 Charlemont Square East 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 in 1895), which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Bessbrook is noted as internationally significant as an early planned mill village begun in the 1840s, predating Port Sunlight and Bourneville by several decades.