13 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

13 College Square East, Bessbrook

A two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian terraced house built around 1883, designed by an unknown architect, though possibly by civil engineer Mr John Hardy. The building adopts an L-plan form facing southwest with a single-storey flat-roofed rear return extending to the northeast.

The house is constructed from random-coursed rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite walling with stepped red brick dressings to jambs and stone cills. Door and window openings are square-headed with gauged brick surrounds. The pitched roof is covered with fibre cement tiles and finished with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section red brick chimney rises from the northwest side. The eaves are flush with separate red and buff brick courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Guttering is generally half-round, discharging to circular section downpipes—cast iron to the front southwest elevation and northeast, with uPVC elsewhere.

The principal southwest-facing elevation is nearly symmetrical and flush with the adjoining terrace. A modest front yard, now a raised flower bed, is enclosed by painted rough-cast cement-rendered dwarf walling topped by painted metal scrollwork railings with a matching foot gate. A concrete path leads from the gate to a uPVC door with a square-headed fanlight above at the southeast end of the facade. The fenestration is regular: two windows at first-floor level and one at ground-floor level, all generally fitted with top-opening uPVC casement windows.

The northwest elevation is attached to No. 14 College Square East.

The rear northeast elevation overlooks a rock-faced random-coursed stone-walled L-shaped yard, accessed through a planked painted timber door from the rear access route. At ground-floor level on the northwest end is a top-opening casement window with stone cill and painted red brick head; a single timber casement window with stone cill sits at first-floor centre. The single-storey flat-roofed rear return projects northeast from the southeast end of the facade, with a painted flush timber door to its northwest side and a top-opening timber casement window to its northeast. Two connected single-storey outbuildings extend from the northeast end of the yard along the northwest boundary wall, covered by a monopitched corrugated asbestos roof. The yard is laid partly with quarry tiles and partly with concrete. The rear elevation shows original stone walling to first-floor level with a single red brick corbel course to the flush eaves; the ground-floor level and rear return are finished with painted smooth render.

The southeast elevation is attached to No. 12 College Square East.

No. 13 forms one of twenty-three similar houses forming the eastern terrace of College Square, a formally planned late-Victorian square of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged on three sides around a central bowling green, playground, and lawn. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to respect the site's subtle topography. Each house is set back from the perimeter public 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 square-headed door openings onto a wide rear access route. The western terrace comprises paired dwellings in similar style, while the northern terrace consists of twelve larger two-and-a-half storey buildings. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast.

Bessbrook Town Hall (the old Institute building) is located to the southeast of the terrace. The central area of the square is now divided into three sections laid to lawn, with a bowling pavilion and green to the northwest enclosed by painted hooped metal railings and bounded by established trees. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings sits to the southeast, and an open children's playground with three granite monuments occupies the centre. One monument records those who faithfully served the Bessbrook firm for nearly fifty years: George Wright (Head Mason), John McClelland (Head Millwright), Michael Boyle (Flax Buyer), Robert Ross (Mill Manager), and Austin Kennedy (Rougher), erected in 1911. A second monument commemorates James N. Richardson, noting the garden as a playground for Bessbrook's children, arranged by his wife in November 1927; its reverse records this stone as the last cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently relocated from Bessbrook Mill grounds, documents the mill's history from ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.