4 Lakeview, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 4 Lakeview is a two-and-a-half-storey, three-bay, semi-detached mid-Victorian dwelling built between 1861 and 1866 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms one half of a pair with the adjoining No. 3 Lakeview to the northeast, and together the two pairs of semi-detached houses make up the group collectively known as "Lakeview". The building is listed in its own right, and the extent of listing covers the house, its outbuilding, and the yard walling.

The house is constructed from local Newry Granodiorite stone — a random-coursed, rock-faced granodiorite — with some elevations finished in painted lined cement render. Granite dressings are used throughout, including raised quoins, window cills, a plinth course, and an eaves course. The roof is covered in natural slate with roll-top black clay ridge tiles, and the flush eaves are formed with a dressed granite eaves course. Three half-dormer windows with plain painted timber bargeboards project from the attic level at the front. Two rendered chimney stacks of rectangular section rise from the gables, each with nine buff clay pots; the northeast chimney is shared with No. 3. Rainwater goods are generally metal, with ogee guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The principal, southeast-facing front elevation is near-symmetrical and looks out towards Bessbrook Lake, a former mill pond associated with Bessbrook Mill. It presents a two-and-a-half-storey, three-bay composition with a ground-floor canted bay window to the southwest, beneath a continuous stone cill course. To the centre bay, a single-storey side-entry porch with a hipped roof projects forward; this has a four-panel painted timber door with brass furniture to its northeast wall, opening onto a single granite step leading to a paved area, a 2/2 timber sash window to the southeast wall, and a 1/1 timber sash to the southwest wall. Similar 1/1 sash windows flank the canted bay. All windows are square-headed with 2/2 sliding timber sashes with horns at ground and first floor levels, with a continuous stone cill course at first floor. A dressed granite plinth course runs along the base of the elevation. The three attic half-dormers are of reduced height. The front elevation is approached by a paved path with a granite verge and a shared gravelled access road that runs from Prospect Place to the northeast down to the front of No. 4 at its southwest end.

The southwest gable elevation is finished in painted smooth render with rendered and exposed quoins and raised granite verges to the gable and chimney apex. A patio area, raised above garden level and enclosed by red brick walling with a stone-built plinth and a sawtooth corbel course, fronts this elevation. Two glazed painted timber patio doors, each with multiple glazed sections and semi-circular splayed fanlights, open onto the patio. String courses in painted render at first floor and attic levels align with the cill courses of the front elevation. High stone-built yard boundary walling extends to the northwest of the dwelling, with pitched slate copings and a raised segmental arched door opening at the southeast leading via three stone steps through a painted sheeted timber door into the enclosed rear yard, which was not accessible at the time of survey. The boundary wall to the northwest has a monopitched-roof outbuilding attached to its northeast side within the yard, and a glazed triangular-arched window is set into the boundary wall. A flight of granite steps at the southeast corner of the patio descends to the lower garden, with decorative polychrome brickwork to the northwest side of the steps featuring blind diamond detailing. The garden is oriented northwest to southeast, running from the southeast site boundary near Bessbrook Lake up to a set of painted sheeted timber vehicular gates with a pedestrian door set into them, which open onto Church Road at the northwest site boundary. The gate piers are square-section red and buff brick pillars with blind lancets and a dentilated corbel course to the red brick caps, and their detailing is similar to the adjacent foot gate of the former Rent Office next door. A new stone-built garage with a painted sheeted timber door stands to the northwest of the dwelling. The southeast garden is laid to lawn with a gravel path, mature shrubs and trees, and stone-built walling to the southeast and southwest boundaries.

Access to the rear, northwest-facing elevation was limited at the time of survey, but where visible it presents a symmetrical two-and-a-half-storey, three-bay composition with four skylights at attic level and a single-storey, single-bay hipped-roof back porch to the centre bay projecting into the enclosed rear yard. This elevation is generally of random-coursed rock-faced Newry Granodiorite with stepped red brick dressings to the jambs and square-headed gauged-brick window openings. A tall semi-circular headed window opening is visible at first floor centre and contains y-tracery. The rear elevation faces into the enclosed yard, which backs onto the outbuildings of the former estate Rent Office, also known as The Garage. The northeast elevation is party to the adjoining No. 3 Lakeview.

The wider Lakeview group consists of two pairs of semi-detached dwellings, all facing southeast towards their individual gardens and Bessbrook Lake. The earlier Nos. 1 and 3 and the later No. 2 (added around 1875) are similar in style but are two-storey dwellings with some significant differences in detailing. All four houses share access from Prospect Place to the northeast via a gravelled road entered through painted metal vehicular gates of vertical irons with pointed ball finials, hung on slim dressed granite pillars with pyramidal caps and flanked by similar foot gates and railings with spearhead finials. Each dwelling's garden is enclosed by stone walling at its southeast extent and runs down towards Bessbrook Lake. No. 4 forms an important group with the former shop and Quaker meeting house and No. 8 Church Road at the centre of the village.

No. 4 Lakeview is of considerable historical and social significance as part of the early planned mill village of Bessbrook. The development of industry at the site dates from 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a John Pollock. The site 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, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; 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 Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began to build housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later explained that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the site for its water power, dense local population, and the availability of locally grown flax. He established Bessbrook as a model village in several phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s, and his layout was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson's philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor and unemployed from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, with the aim of improving their living conditions and prospects.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops, and arranged for milk, tea and cocoa to be 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 in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce to meet demand. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner in the village by the mid-1860s. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of workers, and between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses increasing from 73 to 296.

While the majority of housing built in the village during this period was intended for factory workers, the four houses along Lakeview were occupied by members of the professional classes — recorded occupants included linen merchants, doctors and senior mill managers. The architect of the row is not known with certainty. It has been suggested that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been confined to the expansion of the mill buildings.

No. 4 Lakeview was not recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 or in the contemporary Griffith's Valuation of 1862, and first appears in the Annual Revisions in 1866, at which point it was also recorded alongside No. 3. The valuer set the total rateable value at £16 and noted that the site was initially leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a John Borbridge Doyle, a prominent local antiquarian and writer best known as the author of Lesser Lights of Scripture (1852) and Tours in Ulster: A Handbook to the Antiquities and Scenery of the North of Ireland (1854). Doyle resided at the house until his death in 1882, after which the dwelling passed through several occupants. Around the turn of the 20th century, No. 4 was occupied by W. Malcolm Pim, one of the Managing Directors of the Bessbrook Spinning Company, who remained at Lakeview until around 1912. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 shows the building in its current layout but also records that it originally had a glass conservatory to the west gable, which has since been demolished. The next notable occupant was Samuel James Pink, a flax buyer at Richardson's mill, who resided at the address until his death in 1943, at which point the house passed to a George Newell. The rateable value was increased to £33 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) and stood at £42 by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

During the Second World War, the mill's workers were tasked with supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in the village until the 1960s, when the post-war downturn in the local textile market forced the sale of the majority of its holdings. The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. No. 4 Lakeview was purchased outright from the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1970 by R. Donald Poole. The house was listed in 1981 and was included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area designated in 1983, which was created 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 influenced the design of the English model villages at 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."

In 1999 the house underwent an extensive restoration, which included re-slating the roof in natural slate, the installation of new rainwater goods throughout, and the replacement of all window frames.