6 Charlemont Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 6 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 the northern terrace of Charlemont Square, Bessbrook, County Armagh, and is listed along with its gate, railings, and yard walling. The property sits within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is L-plan in form, facing southeast, and is constructed in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate) with painted red brick dressings and painted stone cills. Window openings have gauged-brick cambered heads. The roof is pitched fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles, and features a three-part canted dormer window with a top-hung opening casement to the centre. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the southwest carries six buff clay pots. The eaves project with a painted timber soffit. Rainwater goods to the front southeast elevation comprise uPVC polygonal guttering discharging to a cast iron circular-section downpipe; the rear northwest elevation has uPVC rainwater goods with half-round guttering and circular-section downpipes.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace. It has a broadly regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level aligned with a reduced-size window to the entrance porch and a wider window to the left-hand side at ground-floor level. Windows throughout are generally four-pane uPVC top-opening casements to the front and plain uPVC top-opening casements to the rear — replacements for the original frames.

A single-storey gabled projecting side entry porch sits at the northeast end of the front facade. It has a painted smooth render finish and abuts a similar, exposed-brick structure belonging to No. 5 Charlemont Square North to the northeast. The porch gable carries a painted timber wave-scroll bargeboard with finial, and a single top-opening uPVC casement window faces the southeast gable. The entrance door is a panelled painted timber door with four glazed panels to the upper half and brass furniture, set on the southwest side of the porch.

The front yard is set to lawn and enclosed by smooth rendered dwarf walling topped by plain hooped painted metal railings. A foot gate hung on circular-section painted metal posts with cast metal conical caps is centred on the southeast boundary. A concrete path leads from the gate to the porch door.

The southwest elevation is attached to No. 7 Charlemont Square North. The northeast elevation is attached to No. 5 Charlemont Square North. Access to the northwest-facing rear elevation is limited, but where visible it comprises a two-storey monopitched-roof rear return projecting to the northeast toward the rear access route and yard boundary. This return has a painted smooth cement rendered finish, uPVC fascia, painted concrete cills, and two uPVC casement windows visible at first-floor level facing southwest. The main facade of the dwelling has a single uPVC casement window facing northwest at first-floor level with a painted stone cill. Two skylights are visible in the pitched fibre cement tile roof. A planked painted timber door set within painted roughcast cement rendered boundary walling gives access from the rear access route to the yard.

GROUP CHARACTER AND SETTING

No. 6 is one of eight similar houses — arranged in pairs — that form the northern terrace of Charlemont Square. These eight houses are the shortest terrace in the square but are distinctly larger than the houses on the east and west terraces, being two-and-a-half-storey paired structures. Each pair shares abutting gabled side entry porches and flanking large rectangular-section chimneys, with painted stepped red brick quoins to each pair of dwellings.

Charlemont Square as a whole is a formally planned mid-Victorian square of 66 buildings arranged on three sides — north, east, and west — around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings, responding to the subtle relief of the site. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform; five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West have traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath with a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are generally larger and enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes.

The central area of the square is 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.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

Bessbrook's origins date to 1761 when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known simply as "The Green." The site was later 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: the principal structures were 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 (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later recorded that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the location for its water power, local flax cultivation, and rural setting near Newry. Bessbrook was developed as a model village in several phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson's approach to village planning was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Richardson's philanthropic motivations led him to employ and house the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside, hoping to improve their circumstances and habits. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three Ps": there was no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police to be stationed there. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops (located at Nos 1–5 Charlemont Square East), and arranged for milk, tea, and cocoa to be distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve the prohibition on alcohol in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house in Bessbrook. 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 purchasing his brother's shares. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson took the opportunity to enlarge his factory substantially and increase his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal landowner and main employer 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 rose from 73 to 296. The architect of the housing has not been established 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 during the 1860s, but his involvement may have been confined to the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used throughout was produced locally at a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate; granite from Bessbrook Quarry is of high quality and was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

Charlemont Square does not appear 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 completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied. The remaining buildings were completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

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 specific stipulations: they could keep a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden but were forbidden from keeping fowl or pigs in the living quarters or yard, and they were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

HISTORY OF NO. 6 SPECIFICALLY

No. 6 Charlemont Square North was constructed between 1862 and 1866. The Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Douglas Lamb and valued at £8. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1930s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current layout, including the entrance porch and rear return. A tennis ground was depicted within the central green on the same map.

The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by George Thompson, employed as a wood turner, whose family worked at Richardson's factory as mechanics and weavers. The census building return described No. 6 as a second-class dwelling consisting of eight rooms.

The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) increased the value of the property to £9 and 10 shillings and recorded that the Thompson family remained at the address until 1953, when the house passed to William Black; the Black family lived there until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century, Bessbrook Mill continued to expand and gained the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War, mill workers were engaged in producing cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970. The sale of property at Bessbrook was driven by a post-war downturn in the local textile market, which preceded the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 6 Charlemont Square North was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and its value was increased to £15 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

The house was listed in 1981. The Bessbrook Conservation Area was 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 planned development of Bessbrook — including the uniform terraces of Charlemont Square and College Square — influenced the design of the English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning across the world. It is also noted that Bessbrook predates Port Sunlight and Bourneville, the village having been begun in the 1840s by John Grubb Richardson.

In 1987 the property underwent an extensive renovation, which included the re-slating of the roof (now fibre cement tiles), the installation of new uPVC window frames, the addition of cast iron rainwater goods, and the extension of the two-storey rear return. Despite these alterations to the windows and the extension of the rear return — which detract from the building's original character — the house continues to be used as a private dwelling and retains its overall Victorian external character.