12 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

12 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1883, possibly to designs by John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881. The architect cannot be confirmed with certainty. The house forms part of College Square East, one of 23 similar houses in the eastern terrace of a formally planned late-Victorian square comprising 53 mill workers' dwellings in total, arranged on three sides around a central green. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The listing extends to the house itself together with its gate, railings, and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The building follows a rectangular plan form facing southwest. It is well proportioned, with walls of random-coursed rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate, also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool), with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, painted stone sills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. The roof is pitched with fibre cement tiles and roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest carries two terracotta clay pots. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, with a metal downpipe to the front elevation.

The front elevation faces southwest and is near-symmetrical, sitting flush with the rest of the terrace. There is a regular fenestration pattern: one window to the ground floor to the northwest of the entrance door, and two windows to the first floor in line with the door and ground-floor window respectively. Windows are generally top-opening uPVC casement units. The entrance is a uPVC door with a square-headed fanlight above, approached by a concrete path from a gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. The modest concrete front yard has raised beds enclosed by painted hooped metal railings.

To the northwest the building is attached to No. 13 College Square East, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 11 College Square East.

The rear northeast elevation has limited access, but where visible consists of a single-storey flat-roofed rear return projecting into a covered rear yard, with a monopitched corrugated Perspex roof over the yard. At first-floor level there is a single uPVC casement window to the centre of the elevation, with original stone walling above. The yard boundary walling is smooth cement-rendered, with a painted planked timber door leading from the rear access route into the covered yard. A single-storey flat-roofed outbuilding occupies the southern corner of the yard.

Alterations

The building retains its external character despite a number of changes. The original roof slates have been replaced with fibre cement tiles. The original windows, front door, and rainwater goods have all been replaced with uPVC. A single-storey flat-roofed kitchen extension was added to the rear around 1982, along with a covered rear yard.

Setting

No. 12 forms part of the planned arrangement of College Square, in which 53 mill workers' dwellings are grouped into east, north, and west terraces arranged around a central area now divided into three sections of lawn. The northwest section contains a bowling pavilion and bowling green, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with established trees at 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 on the opposite side noting that 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 Company Limited in 1878.

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. 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 rear yard of each house is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades across the terrace are generally much altered, while front facades remain nearly uniform. Bessbrook Town Hall — the former Institute building — is located to the southeast at the foot of the eastern terrace. The northern terrace is the shortest at only 12 houses wide, and though similar in character, the houses there are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey buildings.

Historical Context

Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson stated that he "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose a country site near Newry with water power, a local flax-growing population, and room to build. The village was laid out as a deliberate social experiment, and Richardson's approach was shaped by his Quaker beliefs and by the planning principles of William Penn, who had developed Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson's philanthropic intentions included bringing the poor and unemployed from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, providing good housing, recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea, and cocoa to his workers. Bessbrook became known as the village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police — a condition the majority of the population voted to preserve in the 1870s. To this day no public house exists at Bessbrook, and police were not stationed there until the turn of the 20th century.

The development of industry at the site dates from 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a Mr John Pollock. The location was known simply as "The Green" before being renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, few buildings had been erected at the site, the only significant structures recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map being Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

Richardson's business expanded considerably during the American Civil War (1861–65), when disrupted access to American cotton created a boom in the linen industry. He greatly enlarged his factory and workforce, and in 1863 became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after purchasing his brother's shares. In 1865, Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him both the principal employer and principal landowner in the village. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses rising from 73 to 296. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers.

College Square was laid out around 1883 in response to further business expansion. The mid-1880s were noted in the Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide as a "period of intense building activity in the village" during which "the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established." Richardson's factory 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 bowling green at the southern end of the square was added in 1911. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, and 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 under their lease to keep fowl and pigs out of the family quarters and the yard (though pig-sties and fowl-runs were permitted in the garden), and to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 12 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Samuel Frazer, at a valuation of £5 and 10 shillings, a figure that remained unchanged until the 1950s. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the house as occupied by Mary Jane Malcolmson, whose family were employed at Richardson's 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 house was occupied by the Colligan family, who remained until around 1945 when Thomas McClung became the new tenant. The valuation remained at £5 and 10 shillings.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition, and during the Second World War mill workers supplied cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the College Square housing until the 1960s, when the dwellings began to be sold to private individuals; the majority were purchased by a Mr George Preston around 1969. The post-war downturn in the local textile market led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 12 College Square East was purchased outright by the McClung family in 1968, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the house had increased in value to £8.

The building 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. 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 Bournville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning worldwide. Bessbrook is regarded as internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with Port Sunlight and Bournville.