13 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

13 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-terrace house built around 1883, forming part of the eastern terrace of College Square in the planned mill village of Bessbrook. The architect is unknown, though the work may be attributable to John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881. The house and its yard walling are listed together.

Architectural Description

The building takes an L-plan form facing southwest, with a single-storey flat-roofed rear return projecting to the northeast. The walls are built of random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite-type stone quarried on the former Charlemont Estate), with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings to both doors and windows. The roof is pitched with fibre cement tiles and roll-top black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original natural slate. A rectangular-section red brick chimney rises at the northwest end. The eaves are flush, finished with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above.

Rainwater goods are a mix of surviving original cast iron — a cast iron downpipe to the front southwest elevation and cast iron guttering to the northeast — and uPVC replacements elsewhere, generally half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. At ground floor level there is a uPVC door with a square-headed fanlight above, positioned at the southeast end of the facade, with a window to the northwest side. At first floor level, two windows align with the door and ground-floor window below. All windows are top-opening uPVC casements, replacing the original windows. A modest front yard, now laid out as a raised flower bed, is enclosed by painted roughcast cement-rendered dwarf walling topped by painted metal scrollwork railings, with a matching foot gate hung on a square-section post at the southeast corner. A concrete path leads from the gate to the front door.

Northwest Elevation

The building is attached at the northwest to No. 14 College Square East.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast and is enclosed by rock-faced random-coursed stone walling forming a rear L-shaped yard, accessed through a planked painted timber door from the rear access route. At ground floor level on the northwest end of this elevation there is a top-opening casement window with a stone cill and painted red brick head. At first floor level, to the centre of the elevation, there is a single timber casement window with a stone cill. From the southeast end of the rear facade, the single-storey flat-roofed rear return projects into the yard. On the northwest side of this return there is a painted flush timber door with a single square glazed section to its upper half, and a top-opening timber casement window to its left (northeast side). Two connected single-storey outbuildings extend from the northeast end of the yard along the northwest boundary wall, roofed with a monopitched corrugated asbestos covering. The yard floor is largely concrete with some quarry tiles remaining. Where visible, the rear elevation retains original stone walling to first floor level with a single red brick corbel course at the flush eaves; the ground floor and rear return are finished in painted smooth render.

Southeast Elevation

The building is attached at the southeast to No. 12 College Square East.

Condition and Alterations

The building retains its essential character and proportions despite a number of later changes. The original natural slate roof has been replaced with fibre cement tiles. The original front door, windows, rainwater goods, and railings have all been replaced with uPVC or painted metal substitutes.

Setting and Group Value

No. 13 is one of twenty-three similar houses forming the eastern terrace of College Square, which together with Bessbrook Town Hall (the old Institute building) to the southeast make up the eastern side of the square. College Square as a whole comprises 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged in east, north, and west terraces around a central area of lawn, bowling green, and children's playground, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. The northern terrace is the shortest at twelve houses wide, though the houses there are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey buildings. Each house in the square is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with square-headed doorways onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are generally much altered, while front facades remain nearly uniform along the eastern terrace.

The central area of the square is divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and green, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at the northwest boundary — the bowling green was added in 1911. To the southeast is a further enclosed lawn, and in the centre is an open children's playground containing three granite monuments. One monument 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 on the opposite side noting this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook Quarry. A third monument, formerly in the grounds of Bessbrook Mill and recently relocated to the square, details the mill's history from ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

Historical Context

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates to 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected: the principal structures were Mount Caulfield House (the residence of the Nicholson family) and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village of Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later described his motivation: "I had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town, so on looking around, fixed upon a place near Newry … with water power and a thick population around, and in a country district where flax was cultivated in considerable quantities." The village layout was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson was himself a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and his approach combined practical business interests with a genuine desire to provide good living and working conditions for his employees, bringing in the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside in the hope of encouraging self-improvement.

Bessbrook became widely known as a village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and consequently no need for Police. In exchange for maintaining an alcohol-free settlement, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops at Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and no public house exists at Bessbrook to this day; police were not stationed there until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after purchasing his brother's shares. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson used this opportunity to greatly enlarge his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal landowner and employer in the village. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the resulting influx of workers; the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215 between 1861 and 1871, and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

College Square was laid out around 1883 to accommodate further expansion of Richardson's business, during what the Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide describes as "a period of intense building activity in the village" in which "the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established." The factory itself was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The square takes its name from the Primary School on its west side, erected in 1849. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used in the walls was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate; this stone is 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 houses were first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs (permitted in a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden but not in the family quarters or yard), and were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 13 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Thomas Cordun and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings, a valuation that remained unchanged until the 1950s. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades. By the time of the 1911 Census of Ireland the house was occupied by Jane Couser, whose family worked at the factory; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the building was still valued at £5 and 10 shillings and was occupied by John Black.

During the Second World War the mill workers were engaged in producing cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the College Square houses until the 1960s, when declining post-war demand in the textile market prompted their sale; the majority of houses along the square were purchased by a Mr. George Preston around 1969. No. 13 was purchased outright by the Black family in 1968. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the house had increased in value to £8. The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army.

No. 13 College Square East was listed in 1981 and is included within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's significance as a planned mill village. The 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 English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), all of which "have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world." College Square is thus internationally significant as part of one of the earliest planned mill villages in Britain and Ireland, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with these celebrated English examples.