3 Charlemont Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 3 Charlemont Square North is a two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house built between 1862 and 1866 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of Charlemont Square, Bessbrook, County Armagh, and is listed along with its gate, railings and yard walling.

The house is built of random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate), with painted red brick dressings and painted stone cills to square-headed window openings. The plan is rectangular, facing southeast, with a single-storey gabled projecting side entry porch to the front elevation, a two-storey rear return, and a single-storey extension to the rear northwest. The roof is finished in fibre cement sheeting with angled black clay ridge tiles and features a three-part canted dormer window with a top-opening casement to its centre. A replacement rectangular-section red brick chimney with six terracotta clay pots rises to the northeast. The eaves project with a painted timber fascia and soffit; rainwater goods are generally uPVC with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, though a cast iron downpipe is retained to the front southeast elevation.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical. The entry porch sits at the southwest end of the facade, finished in painted smooth render, and abuts the equivalent porch of the neighbouring No. 4 Charlemont Square North to the southwest. The porch has a decorative painted timber wave-scroll bargeboard with finial and a single top-opening painted timber casement window to its southeast gable. The panelled painted timber front door has a glazed upper half and brass furniture. A concrete path leads from the front gate northwest to this door. The front yard is set to lawn and enclosed by a red brick dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on circular-section painted metal posts with cast metal conical caps at the centre of the southeast boundary.

The fenestration pattern across the front elevation is near-regular: two windows at first-floor level align with a reduced-size window to the entrance porch and a wider window to the right-hand side at ground-floor level. Windows to the front southeast elevation are generally four-pane top-opening timber casements; those to the rear northwest are two-pane top-opening timber casements. The current casement windows were installed in 1999, replacing the original windows; roof slates have also been replaced. Painted stone cills are retained to the windows of the rear return and single-storey block.

The rear northwest elevation is finished in painted smooth cement render and has a two-storey mono-pitched rear return at the southwest end, attached to the equivalent structure of No. 4. A single-storey mono-pitched outbuilding abuts the northeast side of the rear return and extends to the yard boundary. There are no windows to the northwest wall of the rear return. Two skylights are visible to the roof of the rear additions. The rear yard is accessed from a wide rear access route through a square-headed door opening in random-coursed rubble stone boundary walling, with a painted timber door set within painted roughcast cement-rendered walling to the northwest. At first-floor level above the single-storey mono-pitched block there is a single top-opening timber casement window with a painted stone cill; below it, at single-storey level, is a double top-opening timber casement window alongside a painted timber door with upper and lower glazed sections.

The building is attached on the southwest to No. 4 Charlemont Square North and on the northeast to No. 2 Charlemont Square North. The rear return has a single window at first-floor level facing northeast, with flush eaves, a rendered brick corbel course and uPVC rainwater goods.

No. 3 is one of eight similar houses arranged in pairs that form the northern terrace of Charlemont Square. These eight houses are the largest in the square, being distinctly taller two-and-a-half-storey structures; each pair shares abutting gabled side entry porches, flanking large rectangular-section chimneys, and painted stepped red brick quoins. The northern terrace is the shortest of the three sides of the square, being only eight houses in width.

Charlemont Square as a whole is a formally designed mid-Victorian square comprising 66 buildings in total, arranged on three sides — east, north and west — around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The front facades of the east and west terraces are nearly uniform, with five larger buildings at the southeast end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeast end of Charlemont Square West having traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The terraces to the east and west are stepped in groups of two dwellings, respecting the subtle relief of the site. Rear facades across the square are much altered with various extensions of different shapes and sizes. The central green is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees at its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911; Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

The square was laid out by John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a prominent linen merchant from Lambeg, who had effectively founded the village of Bessbrook in 1845 when he purchased a derelict mill near Newry and began building housing for his factory workers. The history of industry at the site is older, dating to 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green there. The site had been known simply as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected; the only significant structures were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills. The village was established as a "model village" in phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s.

Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends and his 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 motivation was explicitly philanthropic: in his own words, he "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose a rural location where flax was cultivated. He brought the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to improve their lives. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three Ps" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — and Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops in Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve the prohibition on alcohol in the 1870s, and there remains no public house at Bessbrook to this day. Police were not stationed at the village until the turn of the 20th century.

The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off. Richardson took advantage of this by greatly enlarging his factory and workforce. In 1863 he became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after purchasing his brother's shares. 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 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.

The architect of the houses is not known with certainty. Charles Brett suggests 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 limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used throughout was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate; granite from the Bessbrook Quarry was also used to build Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool. Charlemont Square is not depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year noted that Charlemont Square West — described as "new row" — was the only side then completed, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions.

Each house in 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 obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work. Each house had a garden or yard of approximately one-eighth of an acre.

No. 3 Charlemont Square North was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Thomas Little and valued at £8. Its occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though its value remained unaltered until the 1930s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the house in its current layout, including the entrance porch and rear return. The 1911 Census of Ireland records that the house was occupied by James McCullough, whose family were employed as damask and linen weavers by the Bessbrook Spinning Company; the building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of eight rooms. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) increased its value to £10 and noted that the McCullough family remained at the address until 1940, when Annie Bell took possession; her family remained until 1970. During the Second World War, mill workers at Bessbrook were tasked with supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling its Charlemont Square dwellings to private individuals and firms from the 1960s; the majority were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. This sale was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 3 was purchased outright by the Bell family in 1968 and its value was increased to £15 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

The house was listed in 1981 and was included within 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 Bessbrook, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square, influenced the design of the well-known English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), which "have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world." Bessbrook is considered internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, predating both Port Sunlight and Bourneville by several decades. During the Second Survey the building continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, despite alterations to its windows and dormer.