Spar Supermarket, Prospect Place, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

This is a two-storey, multi-bay village shop on Prospect Place in the centre of Bessbrook, County Armagh, built between approximately 1820 and 1839 and first recorded with certainty on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861. It was constructed to designs by an unknown architect and is one of the very few buildings in Bessbrook believed to predate John Grubb Richardson's planned model village development of the 1840s onwards. The listing covers the shop, yard walling, and entrance piers.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building has a rectangular plan form facing northeast onto Prospect Place, with a monopitched block projecting northeast into a rear yard. It is attached on its southeast side to the similarly detailed No. 1 Lakeview. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles and projecting eaves supported on paired decorative moulded timber corbels. Rainwater goods to the front are generally metal; those to the rear are uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes. The walls are finished in painted lined cement render with raised quoins and painted stone windowsills throughout.

Principal (northeast) elevation

The front elevation consists of four equally spaced first-floor windows and a decorative ground-floor shopfront. The first-floor windows are double-hung, six-over-six sliding timber sash with horns. The two windows to the northwest have painted iron bars; the second window from the southeast has a louvred vent to the bottom sash.

The ground-floor shopfront is seven bays wide and symmetrical, with two separate entrances — one to the southeast and one to the northwest — each flanked by glazed shop windows. The central bay is now blocked with plywood. The bays are divided by panelled painted timber pilasters with moulded scroll brackets at the top, above which runs a continuous modern Perspex signboard displaying "SPAR". Modern branding posters are fitted to the windows. The southeast entrance has two painted sheeted timber doors with a square-headed fanlight, now blocked. The northwest entrance has two painted sheeted timber doors with glazed top halves, and a five-part square-headed fanlight above. Modern painted metal security shutters are fitted to the northwest entrance and its flanking windows. Stone sills and a moulded plinth run along the base of the shopfront. Set back from the northwest gable is a set of vehicular gates leading to an enclosed rear yard; these are modern corrugated gates hung on square-section stone pillars with pyramidal granite caps.

Northwest elevation

This gabled elevation faces onto Church Road and features a projecting verge, quoins, and painted lined cement render. A two-storey monopitched block is attached to the southwest, forming a catslide roof. The square-section pillar of the rear yard entrance abuts the elevation at the southwest of the gabled block; the monopitched block sits within the rear yard and has flush eaves and verge.

Southwest (rear) elevation

The rear elevation faces into a tarmacked yard enclosed by random-coursed, rock-faced stone walling to the northwest and modern outbuildings to the southwest and southeast. The southeastern section of the pitched-roof block faces into the rear yard of No. 1 Lakeview and retains original stone walling with a blocked red brick opening visible at first-floor level, and a single-storey outbuilding attached at ground-floor level belonging to No. 1 Lakeview. The blocked first-floor opening has a stone corbel inserted. The remainder of the rear elevation has a roughcast cement render finish and an irregular pattern of fenestration. A wide square-headed opening at ground floor is partially blocked and fitted with a later painted timber door covered in sheet metal. A reduced-height, iron-barred window at first-floor level is in line with this doorway. To the southeast of the door there is a now-infilled window opening (filled with modern blockwork), and to the northwest a double-hung six-over-six sliding timber sash with horns and painted metal bars, with a stone sill. The monopitched block has a rectangular-section chimney in rustic red brick with a buff clay pot, on its southeast elevation.

Southeast elevation

The building is attached on this side to No. 1 Lakeview.

INTERIOR

The building retains some internal character at first-floor level, though the ground floor has been substantially altered by the insertion of the modern shopfront.

SETTING

The shop is located within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, to the south of Church Road. It is fronted by a tarmacked parking area and is attached to No. 1 Lakeview to the southeast. It forms part of a coherent group with the similarly detailed Nos. 1–4 Lakeview and is close to the listed buildings at Charlemont Square.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

The origins of the Bessbrook settlement stretch back to 1761 when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green at a place then known simply as "The Green." The site was renamed Bessbrook in honour of Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (the brook). By the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map (1834–35) few buildings had been erected, the principal structures being Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it is known today was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends, purchased one of the derelict mills at the site and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later explained that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and selected Bessbrook for its water power, its rural setting, and the local cultivation of flax. 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 developed Bessbrook as a social experiment, providing his workers with good standards of living in the expectation of good working relations. He brought the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live there, hoping to encourage self-improvement. The village became known for the absence of the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and consequently no need for Police. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day there is no public house in Bessbrook; police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

Bessbrook was laid out in phases beginning with Fountain Street in the 1840s, with Charlemont Square added between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate an influx of new workers. Between 1861 and 1871 the population rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses from 73 to 296. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) when the cutting off of American cotton supplies increased demand. Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1863, and Lord Charlemont sold him the remainder of the Camlough Estate in 1865, making him both the main employer and the principal landowner in the village. The Bessbrook Spinning Company continued to expand throughout the 20th century, gaining international recognition, and during the Second World War its workers were tasked with supplying cloth for army uniforms. The post-war downturn in the textile market eventually led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. The Conservation Area Guide notes that Bessbrook's carefully planned development influenced the design of the English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), which in turn "directly influenced town and country planning all over the world."

This building predates Richardson's development. A structure matching the general dimensions of the current building was depicted on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834–35, though it was not recorded in the contemporary Townland Valuations of around 1834. By the time of the second edition Ordnance Survey map (1861) and Griffith's Valuation (1862), the building was clearly established and assigned a total rateable value of £33. At that time it was occupied by the Bessbrook Co-operative Company, managed by a Mr. Thomas Pearson, with the upper floor in use as a Meeting House for the Society of Friends. The Society of Friends vacated the premises by 1866, and the co-operative continued to occupy the building until around 1913, when it became a private dwelling occupied by a Mr. Albert Roulston.

The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the building along its current layout, suggesting few major structural alterations had been made by that date. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value rose to £45, with the building then occupied by a Mr. Wilbur Ferguson operating a shop and stores. The Ferguson family continued to use it until the 1970s, when the shop and stores were purchased outright by a Mr. George Preston around 1970. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value stood at £68. 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. It continues today to function as a local shop, currently occupied by Spar Supermarkets.