17 College Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

17 College Square West, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a two-storey, two-bay terraced dwelling built in approximately 1877 for workers at Bessbrook Mill, constructed from locally quarried Newry Granodiorite stone. It forms part of a row of 18 similar houses making up the western terrace of College Square, a formally planned late-Victorian square of 53 mill workers' dwellings in total, arranged on three sides around a central bowling green, playground and lawn. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The architect is not known with certainty, though the most likely candidate is John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881, who was also responsible for the major extension of the mill in 1884–85. The building has a rectangular plan form facing northeast, with a single-storey rear return.

Architectural Character

The walling to the front northeast facade is generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. Along the terrace, dwellings are grouped in pairs, each pair being symmetrical with doors grouped to the centre, flanked on opposite sides by single windows at ground floor level. Each pair is set between raised roof verges of red brick with clay tile coping, rising to rectangular-section chimneys at apex level. The line of the verge continues vertically down each front facade as stepped red brick quoins, with recessed downpipes flanking each paired set of dwellings. The single dwellings at each end of the terrace are unpaired.

The roof is pitched and clad in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The chimney to the northwest has been rebuilt in rustic red brick and carries six terracotta clay pots. The eaves are flush and feature a decorative layered brick course: a double red brick course, a single buff brick course, and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above, though this decorative eaves course on the front facade is now largely obscured by modern electrical wiring. Cast iron rainwater goods are used to the front, with uPVC to the rear; half-round guttering discharges to circular-section downpipes. The downpipe to the front northeast is recessed into the stepped red brick quoin walling.

Principal Elevation

The front elevation faces northeast and is flush with the rest of the terrace. It is near-symmetrical with a regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first floor level aligned with the openings below. All windows are top-opening uPVC casements. At ground floor level there is a stepped red brick surround and gauged brick arch with a flush keystone detail to the head of the door; the window to the northwest side of the door has flush red brick detailing beneath the cill. A paved path leads from a foot gate — hung on slim posts in painted hooped metal railings atop a dwarf red brick boundary wall enclosing a modest front garden laid to lawn — to a panelled painted timber door with two glazed panels to its upper half and a square-headed fanlight above. Many television aerials also detract from the overall character of the terrace.

Southeast and Northwest Elevations

To the southeast, the building is attached to No. 16 College Square West. To the northwest, it is attached to No. 18 College Square West.

Rear Elevation

The rear elevation faces southwest and consists of original stone walling with two top-opening uPVC casement windows at first floor level. A rendered and painted single-storey flat-roofed return projects to the southwest, running the full width of the elevation, into an enclosed rear yard. The rear return has two rooflights and a painted flush timber door with a glazed top half at the southeast end of the elevation, opening into the rear yard, along with a two-part uPVC casement window to the northwest side of the door. The yard boundary wall to the southwest is of random-coursed rock-faced local stone with a painted sheeted timber door leading from the rear access route into the yard. An outbuilding in the north corner of the yard has a monopitched corrugated metal roof. The rear return, outbuilding, and inner face of the yard boundary wall all have painted smooth render finishes. The rear facades along the terrace are generally much altered, though the single-storey rear extension at No. 17 is considered significantly more sympathetic than the larger two-storey returns seen elsewhere, being subservient to the original building and retaining some first floor level detailing and the original rear yard boundary walling.

Setting

No. 17 forms part of the planned composition of College Square. Each house in the square is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped with hooped metal railings, with a rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling opening onto a wide rear access route. The eastern terrace comprises 23 dwellings built in a similar style but with some significant differences in detailing; they are stepped in groups of six to respect the subtle relief of the site and terminate at their southeastern end with the former Institute building, which served as the village Town Hall. The northern terrace is the shortest in the square at only 12 houses wide; although similar in character to the other terraces, these are distinctly larger two-storey dwellings. The former school building is located at the southeast end of the western terrace.

The central area of the square is divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. The northwest section contains a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees along its northwest boundary. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings lies to the southeast, and an open children's playground occupies the centre of the square. The playground contains three granite monuments. One 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 to the opposite side recording that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument was formerly in the grounds of Bessbrook Mill and has been recently moved to its current location; it details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.

Historical Background

The origins of Bessbrook lie with John Pollock, who opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site in 1761. The location was originally known simply as "The Green" but was renamed 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 main structures shown were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson described his motivation as an aversion to responsibility for a factory population in a large town, and he sought out a rural location with water power, a sizeable local population, and flax cultivation in the surrounding area. 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 philosophy led him to bring the poor and unqualified from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, with the intention of encouraging self-improvement. He provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute building, a number of well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore, in Richardson's view, no need for police. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day there remains 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. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was disrupted, and Richardson responded by greatly enlarging his factory and increasing his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865. 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 in stages between approximately 1874 and approximately 1890, driven by the continued expansion of Richardson's business. The mid-1880s were a period of intense building activity in the village, and Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The houses were constructed by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company using Newry Granodiorite from a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite was of high quality and was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The western terrace of College Square, including No. 17, was constructed between approximately 1874 and approximately 1877; Annual Revisions first recorded Nos 1–12 College Square West in 1874, with Nos 13–18 added by 1877.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and possessed between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing conditions regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs — permitted in a garden pig-sty and fowl-run but not in the family quarters or yard — and obliging them to send their children to school until old enough for mill work.

No. 17 College Square West was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr David Maginnis, valued at £6. The occupancy changed frequently over the following decades. During the 1911 Census of Ireland the house was occupied by John Jackson, a local stonemason whose entire family worked at the mill; the building return described it as a second-class dwelling of six inhabited rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) it was valued at £7 10 shillings and occupied by the Littlewood family.

During the Second World War the mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the post-war downturn in the textile market led to the dwellings being sold to private individuals and firms, foreshadowing the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 17 was purchased outright by Mr William J. Brown in approximately 1968; by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value had risen to £10.

The building was listed in 1981 and was included within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village. The carefully planned development of Bessbrook, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, is considered to have influenced the design of the well-known English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning internationally. College Square and the earlier Charlemont Square could be considered as internationally important in their own right as part of this early planned mill village begun in the 1840s.

In approximately 1997, No. 17 underwent a renovation that included the replacement of its front window frames and entrance door.

Materials: Walling — Newry Granodiorite; Roof — fibre cement tiles; Rainwater goods — cast iron to front, uPVC to rear; Windows — uPVC casements.