13 College Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 13 College Square West is a two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian terraced mill workers' dwelling, built in approximately 1877 from locally quarried stone. It forms part of a row of 18 similar houses making up the western terrace of College Square, a formally planned late-Victorian square in Bessbrook, County Armagh. The listing extends to the house itself, together with its gate, railings and boundary walling. The building sits within the Bessbrook Conservation Area.

The architect is not known with certainty, though a likely candidate is Mr John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881, who was also responsible for the extension of the mill. The houses along College Square West were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is built in random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite — a locally quarried granite of high quality, the same material used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The building faces northeast and is rectangular in plan, with a two-storey rear return, giving an overall L-shaped form.

Along the terrace, dwellings are grouped in symmetrical pairs, each pair sharing a raised roof verge in red brick with a clay tile coping that rises to a rectangular-section chimney at apex level. Stepped red brick quoins continue the line of these verges vertically down the front facade, flanking each pair of dwellings. Within each pair, the front doors are grouped together at the centre, with a single window to either side at ground floor level. The rebuilt chimney to the northwest is of rectangular-section red brick with six buff clay pots. The roof is covered in pitched fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The eaves are flush, finished with a double red brick course, a single buff brick course, and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Rainwater goods to the front northeast elevation are generally metal, with uPVC to the rear southwest; half-round guttering discharges to circular-section downpipes, with the front downpipe recessed into the stepped red brick quoins.

Window and door openings throughout are square-headed with gauged brick arches, painted stone cills, and stepped red brick dressings to jambs. All windows are top-opening timber casements. The front elevation is near-symmetrical, with two windows at first floor level aligned with the openings below. At ground floor level, the door has a stepped red brick surround with a gauged brick arch and flush keystone detail to the head; the window to the northwest side of the door has flush red brick detailing beneath the cill. The panelled painted timber front door has a glazed upper half with a square-headed fanlight above.

A modest front garden is laid to lawn and enclosed by galvanised hooped metal railings with a similar foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A paved path leads from the gate to the front door.

To the southeast, the building is attached to No. 12 College Square West; to the northwest, it is attached to No. 14 College Square West.

The rear southwest elevation, where visible, has a single reduced bay to the northwest with a top-opening timber casement window to both ground and first floor levels, sharing a stone cill. A two-storey, flat-roofed return at the southeast projects into the enclosed L-shaped rear yard. The rear return has a painted timber fascia and a felt-covered roof, with two timber casement windows visible at first floor level on the northwest side, fitted with slim concrete cills, and a wider opening visible at ground floor level. The rear elevation and return are finished in pebbledash render. The rear yard boundary walling is of random-coursed rock-faced local stone, with a painted sheeted timber door to the southeast giving access from the rear service route. A large rendered and pebbledashed extension to the rear detracts from the building's character and heritage value. New window frames were installed to the front facade in approximately 1998. Decorative eaves detailing to the front facade is now partially masked by modern electrical wiring, and television aerials further detract from the overall character.

SETTING AND GROUP VALUE

No. 13 College Square West has substantial group value as one of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged on three sides of a formal planned square — a rare form in the province. The square is accessed primarily from Fountain Street to the southeast and is arranged around a central green now divided into three sections: a bowling green and pavilion to the northwest, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at its boundary (the bowling green was added in 1911); a lawn to the southeast similarly enclosed; and an open children's playground in the centre. 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, recently moved from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill to its current location, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.

Each dwelling 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 typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are generally much altered.

The eastern terrace comprises 23 dwellings built in a similar style but with some significant differences in detailing. They are stepped in groups of six to respect the subtle relief of the site and terminate at their southeastern end with the village Town Hall, the former Institute building. The northern terrace, the shortest in the square at only 12 houses wide, contains distinctly larger two-storey dwellings, though similar in character to the others. The former school building is located at the southeastern end of the western terrace.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Bessbrook's origins as an industrial settlement date to 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as "The Green." The village was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, the first Ordnance Survey map shows few buildings — principally Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it exists 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 and began building housing for his factory workers. In his own words, Richardson "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." Richardson's layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning and development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson's philanthropic spirit led him to employ the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside, hoping to encourage them to improve their circumstances. Bessbrook became famous as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for a police presence — a stipulation which the majority of the population voted to preserve in the 1870s. In exchange, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. Police were not stationed at the village until the turn of the 20th century.

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

College Square was laid out in stages between approximately 1874 and approximately 1890, driven by the continued expansion of Richardson's business. The mid-1880s were a period of intense building activity, during which the factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85, and the earlier planning ideals of the village were re-established with the construction of College Square. Annual Revisions first recorded nos. 1–12 College Square West in 1874; nos. 13–18, including the present building, were added by 1877. A quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate supplied the Newry Granodiorite used throughout the village.

No. 13 College Square West was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr J. Ferguson and valued at £6. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades. By the 1911 Census the house was vacant, though it was recorded in the accompanying building return as a second-class dwelling of six inhabited rooms. Under the First General Revaluation (1936–57) it was valued at £7 10s and occupied by a Mr James Bradley. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of its housing stock until the 1960s, when properties began to be sold to private individuals and firms as the post-war downturn in the local textile market took hold; the mill itself closed in 1972. George Preston purchased No. 13 in approximately 1969 and leased it to a Mr Herbert McElroy. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value had risen to £10. The building was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area designated in 1983.

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 regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs (permitted in a pig-sty or fowl-run in the garden, but not in the family quarters or yard), and an obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

The planned development of Bessbrook — including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square — has been recognised as having influenced the design of the later English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning worldwide. Both College Square and the earlier Charlemont Square could be considered of international importance as part of one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s. The use of locally quarried Newry Granodiorite across the front facades of the square creates a distinctive and unified sense of identity and place, and each individual dwelling, including No. 13, plays a significant role in the overall composition and planned architectural effect of College Square.