2 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

2 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a two-storey, two-bay terraced house finished in painted lined cement render, originally built around 1865 by an unknown architect as part of a row then known as Fountain Place. The house was substantially rebuilt, extended to the rear, and given a more refined front facade around 1926, at which point the row was renamed Wakefield Terrace. It forms part of a terrace of six broadly identical houses prominently positioned at the south-western end of Fountain Street and the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square. It also has significant group value with the neighbouring terraces on Charlemont Square and Lakeview.

Architectural Description

The house has good proportions and modest detailing, and retains its character despite some external alterations. Its rectangular plan faces north-east, with a two-storey rear return added around 1926. The walling is generally painted lined cement render with square-headed door and window openings, and painted stone sills.

The main roof is pitched and clad in fibre cement tiles with angled black clay ridge tiles. The rear return has a hipped roof in natural slate with roll-top terracotta ridge tiles, and there is a valley between the front block and the rear return. The eaves are flush with a painted timber fascia. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the south-east carries two buff clay pots; the chimney to the north-west has a single terracotta clay pot; two similar chimneys to the rear return each have a single buff clay pot. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, with the exception of a short section of cast iron downpipe to the front which discharges into the guttering of the adjoining No. 1 Wakefield Terrace.

Principal (North-East) Elevation

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace. At ground floor there is a window to the north-west side of the door. Above, a gabled window aligned with the ground-floor window rises to first floor level. All windows are top-opening timber casements. The doorcase has a moulded pediment entablature with raised panels to the brackets and a raised triangular panel below. The door itself is a painted panelled timber door with a glazed top half and a square-headed fanlight, opening onto three stone steps down to the public footpath.

South-West (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces south-west into a rear yard shared with the other houses in the terrace. The two-storey hipped-roof rear return, added around 1926, abuts the similarly sized front block to the north-east, creating a valley between the two. The rear elevation has a lined cement render finish. At first floor there is a single uPVC casement window to the centre; at ground floor there are two uPVC casement windows, with the north-west window reduced in height, all with stone sills. A uPVC door with a glazed top half and a square-headed fanlight occupies the south-east side of the ground floor and opens onto a concrete yard. Raised render quoins appear to the south-east. The rear yard contains a modern block-built outbuilding to the south-west with a corrugated metal roof, and a stone-built south-west wall.

Party Walls

To the south-east the house is attached to No. 1 Wakefield Terrace; to the north-west it is attached to No. 3 Wakefield Terrace.

Setting

Nos. 1 to 6 Wakefield Terrace occupy a gently sloping corner site at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square. Nos. 1 to 5 face north-east towards Fountain Street and are fronted by the public footpath; Nos. 2 to 5 share a continuous ridge line. No. 6 faces north-west onto Church Road and is set slightly back from the public footpath. The rear yards are open to those of the neighbouring dwellings and are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling to the south-west. A section of original yard walling facing south-east is rendered and finished with a tall pier with a concrete capping, adjacent to No. 1 Wakefield Terrace.

The village fountain, from which Fountain Street takes its name, stands to the north-east of No. 1. It is square in plan, built in granite ashlar with cast iron spouts to each side and a finial to the top, and is surrounded by a rectangular enclosure formed by dwarf granite walling topped with painted metal railings. A stone trough remains in situ.

Historical Background

Bessbrook's origins as a settlement date to 1761 when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a John Pollock. The site was known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (the "Brook"). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s shows very little development at Bessbrook at that time, recording little beyond Mount Caulfield House (the residence of the Nicholson family) and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, was influenced in his planning of the village by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning and development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. In his own words, Richardson "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose Bessbrook for its water power, its dense local population, and the surrounding flax-growing countryside. By providing good standards of living Richardson hoped to foster positive relations between employer and employees, and established the village as a social experiment in which workers could live and work in contentment. According to historian R. Harrison, Richardson's philanthropic outlook led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, with the hope of encouraging self-improvement.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's": by Richardson's stipulation there was to be no public house and no pawn shop in the settlement, and therefore no need for police to be stationed there. In compensation, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to mill workers. The arrangement proved effective: the majority of the population voted to preserve the 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.

Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing various stipulations. George Bassett, writing in 1888, recorded that each house possessed "a garden [or yard] containing an eighth of an acre," with clauses requiring that fowl and pigs not be kept in the family quarters or yard (though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden), and obliging tenants to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

In 1863 Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company following the purchase of his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson took the opportunity to greatly enlarge his factory and expand his workforce. In 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook by the mid-1860s. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the influx of new workers, and Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace — then known as Fountain Place — was constructed during this same period. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses in the village grew from 73 to 296.

The Bessbrook 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 famous English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning across the world.

Development of the Site

The row of houses along Fountain Place had not yet been built at the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1862 but was first recorded in 1866 in the Annual Revisions. Early 20th-century photographs of the terrace show that the predecessors of Nos. 1 and 6 Wakefield Terrace were originally single-storey cottages, while the houses in between, including the precursor of No. 2, formed a two-storey terrace. The building that preceded No. 2 Wakefield Terrace was originally valued at £4 and 10 shillings and was occupied by a Ms. Cecilia Boyle. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the site as occupied by Hugh Hamilton, a retired linen weaver, and described the house as a second-class dwelling consisting of three rooms. The contemporary Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the houses along Fountain Place as a simple terraced structure with no outbuildings.

In 1926 the Annual Revisions valuer noted that the houses along Fountain Place were in the process of being rebuilt, though it is not known with certainty whether this involved complete reconstruction or major refurbishment. The row was renamed Wakefield Terrace at this time, and following the rebuilding work No. 2 was revalued at £6. The Annual Revisions Town Plan (c. 1909–1935) records that No. 2 was extended to the rear as part of this work by the addition of the two-storey return. The valuer noted that the rebuilt house was initially leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms. Eveline Stewart. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value of No. 2 was raised to £12, at which time the house was occupied by a Mr. George Bradley.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War the mill workers supplied cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when many dwellings in the village began to be sold to private individuals and firms, a process necessitated by the post-war decline in the local textile market which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 2 Wakefield Terrace was purchased outright by a Mr. Joseph Glass around 1967, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value of the house stood at £15 and 10 shillings.

No. 2 Wakefield Terrace 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. Northern Ireland Environment Agency records note that the house underwent renovation around 1995, which included the installation of new sliding sash window frames throughout.