5 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

5 Charlemont Square East is a two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house and former shop, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The architect is unknown. The building forms part of a group of five similar commercial and residential buildings at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square East — each originally having a ground-floor shopfront with a dwelling above — which together with twenty-seven smaller terrace dwellings to the north-west form the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square. The square as a whole consists of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green and is one of the most significant planned industrial settlements in Ireland.

Origins and Historical Significance

Bessbrook's origins lie in 1761 when a Mr. John Pollock opened a woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known simply as "The Green", later renamed Bessbrook after his wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, when the first edition Ordnance Survey map was made, very few buildings had been erected: only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills were recorded.

The village as it exists 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 building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later wrote that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town", and so chose a rural site near Newry with water power and access to locally grown flax. 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. Bessbrook was developed as a social experiment and model village intended to provide good living and working conditions, with Richardson bringing workers from the surrounding countryside and hoping to help them improve their circumstances.

The village became famous as a settlement without the "Three P's": Richardson stipulated there would be no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and consequently no need for Police. In place of a public house, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops (including premises at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East), and distributed 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 is no public house 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 shareholding. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson expanded both his factory and his workforce significantly. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal landowner and employer at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the village's population 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 was not depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had begun by 1862 when Griffith's Valuation noted that Charlemont Square West (described as "new row") was the only completed side of the square, with all 26 of its buildings still unoccupied. The remaining terraces were completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions. The architect of the houses 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 expanding the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The houses were built of Newry Granodiorite, a local granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate. This stone was used throughout Bessbrook and is of a quality sufficient to have been used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool. Each house was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement including clauses about the keeping of pigs and poultry (permitted in a garden sty or run, but not in the house or yard), and an obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

Bessbrook is recognised internationally as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s, and contemporary with — and influential upon — the later 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 worldwide. The Bessbrook Conservation Area, which includes this building, was designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village. The building was listed in 1981.

History of No. 5 Charlemont Square East

No. 5 was originally let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Thomas Sinton and valued at £20. It was initially used as a bakery, with a ground-floor shopfront. By 1911, the Census of Ireland recorded the address as occupied by Thomas H. Jackson, a shoemaker who operated a cobbler's shop from the ground floor. The census building return described it as a second-class dwelling with ten rooms. The Jackson family had vacated by 1941, when a Mr. Lawson Honeyford was recorded as occupant under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), which reduced the property's value to £15 and 10 shillings. By this time the valuer recorded no shop, describing the building simply as a private dwelling; the ground-floor shopfront appears to have been filled in as early as the 1930s. Honeyford purchased the property outright in 1968 and continued to live there at least until the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), which increased its value back to £20.

During the 20th century, Bessbrook Mill continued to expand and gained international recognition, with the mill workers supplying cloth for military uniforms during the Second World War. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when properties began to be sold to private individuals and firms — the majority of houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970. The sale of housing was made necessary by the post-war decline in the local textile market, which led to the mill's closure in 1972.

In 1990, No. 5 underwent an extensive renovation which included the construction of a modern single-storey rear extension (replacing the original rear return), the installation of cast iron rainwater goods, and the restoration of its windows.

Architectural Description

The building is of L-plan form facing south-west, with a single-storey rear return added around 1990. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite with red brick dressings; window openings have stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads. The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a half-dormer window to the south-west elevation. The original rectangular-section red brick chimney to the north-west (now rendered) has a red brick corbel course and single terracotta and buff clay pots. The eaves project with painted timber fascia and soffit. Rainwater goods are generally cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to rectangular hoppers and circular-section downpipes; the guttering to the front elevation is a uPVC replacement.

Principal (South-West) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical, flush with the main terrace of shopfronts to the south-east, and accessed directly from the public footpath. At the south-eastern end of the elevation there is a panelled, painted timber door opening onto a single stone step, with brass furniture and a semicircular-headed fanlight above. The original ground-floor shopfront has been removed and replaced with stone walling, with a window inserted at ground-floor level having a stepped red brick surround with curved jambs. At first-floor level there are two windows, and a half-dormer window to the south-west wall with original painted timber lobed bargeboard. The windows throughout the front elevation are generally double-hung sliding timber sash, with 2/2 horizontal glazing bars and window horns.

North-West Elevation

The building is attached on the north-west to the smaller No. 6 Charlemont Square East, the first of twenty-seven similar dwellings which extend north-west to form the remainder of Charlemont Square East. Being narrowly set back from No. 6, the gable has a rectangular-section mid-ridge chimney to the apex and a smooth cement render finish throughout.

North-East (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces north-east and has two double-hung sliding timber sash windows at first-floor level with exposed sash boxes, and two skylights to the pitched roof. The single-storey pitched-roof rear return projects to the south-east into the rear yard, with a smaller flat-roofed outbuilding attached to its north-east. The boundary to the north-east extent of the yard is formed by replacement smooth rendered dwarf walling topped by painted metal railings, with a pair of painted metal vehicular gates on the right-hand side. These gates lead south-west from the rear access route into a concrete yard. At ground-floor level of the rear elevation there are two-part sliding patio doors facing north-east; on the north-west side of the rear return there is a back door consisting of a painted timber door with a glazed top half. The rear return has a top-opening timber casement corner window to its northern edge. The finish to ground-floor level and the rear return is generally smooth cement render; original stonework is exposed above.

South-East Elevation

On the south-east side, the building is attached to No. 4 Charlemont Square East.

Setting

No. 5 forms part of Charlemont Square East, itself part of a formally planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops comprising a square made up of east, north and west terraces arranged around a central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath, with a modest-sized front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings, reflecting the subtle changes in the site's level. 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 along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform, with the five larger buildings at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square East — of which this building forms one — and one at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square West generally retaining traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest, comprising only eight houses, which are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central area of the square is laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground to the south-east includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in Bessbrook in 1911, and Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the south-east of the playground.