19 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

19 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1883. The architect is unknown, though the work may have been carried out by John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881. The house is listed along with its gate, railings and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The house is L-plan in form, facing southwest, with a two-storey rear return and a single-storey covered yard extension to the rear northwest. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality local granite), with stepped painted red brick dressings, painted stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. The pitched roof is clad in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original natural slates. Eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest, reconstructed around 1997, carries two terracotta clay pots. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. A modest paved front garden is enclosed by hooped painted metal railings with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a painted panelled timber door at the southeast end of the facade. The door has two glazed panels to its upper half, painted metal furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. There is a window to the northwest side at ground-floor level. The fenestration is regular: two windows at first-floor level align with the main entrance door and ground-floor window below. Windows to the principal southwest-facing elevation are generally double-hung sliding timber sash windows with window horns; windows to the rear northeast elevation are timber casements.

Northwest Elevation

To the northwest, the building is attached to No. 20 College Square East.

Southeast Elevation

To the southeast, the building is attached to No. 18 College Square East.

Rear (Northeast) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast and has a two-storey pitched-roof rear return projecting into a concrete rear yard. This return is abutted to its northwest by a monopitched block. The rear return is reduced to a single bay in width, with a single top-opening casement window at first-floor level above the monopitched block. The monopitched extension has a corrugated Perspex roof and painted planked timber walling to the yard, with some glazing flanking a similar door facing southeast. A flat-roofed block is located at the northern corner of the rear yard and abuts the monopitched extension to the northeast. The rear return has single top-opening timber casement windows to the northeast gable at both ground-floor and first-floor levels. The rear yard boundary walling is random-coursed rock-faced stone, with a painted planked timber door leading from the rear access route into the yard. Walling to the facade and rear return is generally painted smooth cement render, with a similar finish to the interior face of the original yard boundary walling.

Setting and Group Value

No. 19 is one of twenty-three similar houses forming the eastern terrace of College Square, which together with Bessbrook Town Hall (the old Institute building) to the southeast makes up the eastern side of the square. College Square as a whole is a formally designed late-Victorian square comprising 53 mill workers' dwellings in total, arranged along the north, west and eastern sides of a central area now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings, respecting the subtle relief of the site. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. The northern terrace is the shortest at twelve houses in width, and is distinctly larger, being two-and-a-half storeys. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath with a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are 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; front facades are nearly uniform along the eastern terrace.

The central area of the square is divided into three sections. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with some established trees at the northwest boundary. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings lies to the southeast. In the centre is an open children's playground containing three granite monuments. One monument 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 its current location from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.

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, then simply known as "The Green." The site was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; the only significant structures shown 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, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, in his own words, "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town, so on looking around, fixed upon a place near Newry … with water power and a thick population around, and in a country district where flax was cultivated in considerable quantities." He established Bessbrook as a model village in several phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and his 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 approach led him to bring the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — with Richardson providing recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea and cocoa 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 after purchasing his brother's shares. 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 Richardson 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, 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" in which "the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established with the building of College Square." Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The square was named after the primary school on its western side, erected in 1849. The houses were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company using Newry Granodiorite from a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate — a granite of sufficient quality to have been used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The houses were first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883.

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

No. 19 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Thomas Hand and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings, a valuation which remained unchanged until the 1950s. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the house as occupied by Isaac Emerson, a linen yarn dresser employed at Richardson's factory; the accompanying building return described it 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 and 10 shillings and was occupied by a Mr John Brown.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, and during the Second World War mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling its housing in Bessbrook from the 1960s onwards, driven by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. The majority of the houses along College Square were purchased by a Mr George Preston around 1969, and No. 19 was among them. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the house had been increased in value to £8 and continued to be occupied by John Brown.

No. 19 College Square East was listed in 1981 and was included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area when it was designated in 1983, in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village. Around 1997 the house underwent a renovation that included restoration of the roof, reconstruction of the chimney stack, and replacement of the sliding sash windows, as well as the replacement of the front door. The original natural roof slates, front door and windows have thus all been replaced. A large extension has also been added to the rear.

Bessbrook is internationally significant as an early planned mill village, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with — and considered an influence on — the famous English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), all of which have directly influenced town and country planning around the world.