The Garage, 8 Church Road, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 8 Church Road, known locally as The Garage, is a one-and-a-half-storey, three-bay former estate rent office for the Bessbrook Spinning Company, built in around 1866 to designs by an unknown architect. Now in residential use, the building is constructed in local Newry Granodiorite granite with red and buff polychrome brick detailing and follows an L-plan form facing north onto Church Road, with a later modest one-and-a-half-storey stone-built rear return. The listing covers the house, outbuildings, garages, boundary walling, piers, gates and railings.

The building stands in the heart of Bessbrook village in County Armagh, which was established as a model industrial settlement by the prominent linen merchant John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891) of Lambeg, who purchased a derelict mill on the site in 1845 and began building housing for his factory workers. Bessbrook is notable as a planned mill village and is considered to have influenced the famous English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), which in turn directly shaped town and country planning worldwide. Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and his layout of the village drew on the planning ideas of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for developing Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson's philanthropic aims led him to provide workers with good-quality housing, recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea and cocoa. The village was famously established without the so-called "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for a police station — a stipulation that the majority of the population voted to preserve in the 1870s; to this day, Bessbrook has no public house, and police were not stationed there until the turn of the 20th century.

The rent office was built in around 1866 in response to the rapid growth of Bessbrook's population during the mid-1860s. By 1863, Richardson had become sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen trade boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65), when the cutting off of American cotton supplies benefited linen producers; Richardson expanded both his factory and his workforce considerably. Lord Charlemont sold the remaining Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner in Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house new workers, and between 1861 and 1871 the village's population rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses growing from 73 to 296. The erection of a dedicated rent office became necessary to manage this greatly enlarged estate. The building was first recorded in 1866 in the Annual Revisions, which set its total rateable value at £5 and noted it was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and occupied by Richardson's land agents. The first recorded agent was William Davies, Richardson's estate agent and a local magistrate, who resided at Moyallan in County Down and continued in the role until around 1907. The architect of the rent office is not known with certainty; C. E. B. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his involvement may have been limited to the mill buildings. The masons and joiners who built the rent office were employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, and the Newry Granodiorite used throughout is the same local granite used across the village, quarried on the former Charlemont Estate. The building does not appear to have been used as a private dwelling in the early 20th century: neither the 1901 nor the 1911 Census of Ireland recorded any occupants. By the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), a Mr Thomas J. Black was operating a motor garage from the premises, and the outbuilding range to the rear was used as a garage at this time, with the combined rateable value rising to £16 and 10 shillings. The Black family purchased the site outright in 1968 and continued to run a garage there until at least the 1970s, when the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) set the value at £30. The building was listed in 1981 and 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. A general restoration took place around 1987, and around 1995 the windows were replaced with the current Georgian-style frames. The building is no longer used as a motor garage and has been converted to domestic use.

Architecturally, the building is considered one of the most distinctive within the village. The contrast between the rock-faced local stone walling and the polychrome brick dressings, combined with matching walling and gates to the front, gives the building considerable character. It retains some of its original plan and internal features.

The pitched roof is covered in natural slate, with alternating angled and cockscomb-crested terracotta ridge tiles. The centre of the pitch has three bands of fish-scale slates, and there are two decorative stepped rectangular-section red and buff brick chimneys to the ridge, each carrying a single tall buff clay pot. The eaves are flush with a buff brick eaves course composed of alternating flush bricks and projecting paired corbelled headers. Rainwater goods are cast iron, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite with red and buff brick dressings; the window openings have gauged red brick to the square heads and jambs, and the quoins are stepped red brick.

Windows throughout are double-hung 6/6 sliding timber sash with horns and painted stone cills unless otherwise noted.

The principal elevation faces north directly onto Church Road in three bays with an asymmetric arrangement. The first bay from the west narrows and projects slightly, forming a gable with a window and a blind diamond detail in raised buff brick (with red brick to the interior) at the centre of the gable. The remaining two-bay block to the east has a window and an open porch; the porch is in the first bay from the east and has a pitched painted timber canopy with a terracotta clay ball finial to the apex and decorative timber corbels. The door opening is semi-circular headed with buff brick to head and jambs and is fitted with a polished sheeted timber door with decorative iron studs and black iron furniture. The two sash windows in this section have smooth cement bands to the red brick openings and projecting drip moulds in buff brick. The two western bays are fronted by a narrow area enclosed by dwarf stone walling topped with squared coping and painted metal railings. The door to the porch at the east opens directly onto the roadside. Two chimneys serve this elevation: one to the west gable end and one between the first and second bays from the east end.

To the west of the dwelling there is a pedestrian foot gate in a section of stepped gabled stone walling with polychrome brick dressings to a pointed arch and a painted sheeted timber door leading to the west elevation and the enclosed rear yard to the south. Two-part timber vehicular gates in a similar style are attached to the west of the foot gate, leading to No. 4 Lakeview, and are hung on tall square-section polychrome brick pillars with blind arches to the sides and a dentilated brick cornice to the red brick caps. A vehicular entrance to the east of the dwelling leads to the enclosed yard, with painted sheeted timber gates hung on square-section stone-built pillars with stepped red brick quoins and pyramidal granite caps.

The east elevation faces into an enclosed cobbled yard. It comprises a stone-built single-bay gabled block to the north with a plain painted timber bargeboard, and a single-bay one-and-a-half-storey stone-built rear return to the south. There is a 6/6 timber sash window to the first floor of the gable, which appears to be a later addition, and an 8/8 timber sash window directly below at ground floor level. The rear return has a 6/6 timber sash window at ground floor level.

The south elevation faces into an enclosed concrete yard and is three bays wide. The one-and-a-half-storey rear return to the east has two double-hung 6/6 sliding timber sash windows and a buff brick corbel course to its west side. The gable apex of the rear return has a four-part side-opening casement window, and there is a lower attached pitched-roof stone-built outbuilding extending to the south. The west side of the rear return has a lined render finish with a square-headed door opening and a 4/4 timber sash window to the south of the door. The door is a painted sheeted timber door with black iron furniture, and there is a four-part square-headed fanlight above.

The west elevation is a gabled one-and-a-half-storey block with a polychrome brick chimney at the gable apex. It has a lined smooth cement render finish with a raised blind diamond detail in render to the gable, and a double-hung 2/2 sliding timber sash window to the south at first floor level.

The building sits on the south side of Church Road, with a private yard to the east accessed through timber vehicular gates, enclosed by high stone walling to the east and a linear range of stone-built outbuildings to the west. To the south of the yard there is an open double garage with a hipped natural slate roof. Four large stone-built houses to the rear of the site form Lakeview Terrace, with the decorative stone and brick entrance to the west of The Garage leading to No. 4 Lakeview. Directly opposite, on the north side of Church Road, is a modest public garden known as the 'Shelter and Tirsah', recorded by a datestone as having been erected in 1911 for the people of Bessbrook in memory of Helena and Jane Marion Richardson by James N. Richardson; it is now owned by the Bessbrook Development Company. The building is also in close proximity to the former shop and Quaker meeting house and the Bessbrook Squares, all of which contribute to its group value and setting.