11 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 11 Charlemont Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. It forms one of twenty-seven similar houses which, together with five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings at the south-eastern end, make up the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square. The square as a whole comprises 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the south-east. The listing covers the house itself, its gate, railings, and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The building is of L-plan form, facing south-west, with a single-storey rear return. Walls are generally of random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried from 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 painted red brick dressings. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though the door and window heads have generally been squared off with painted smooth cement render. The pitched roof is now covered in fibre cement rather than the original slates, with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the north-west with two terracotta pots. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are uPVC with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (South-West) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace line, which is set back from the larger shop buildings at its south-eastern end. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling topped with hooped painted metal railings, with a matching painted metal foot gate to the south-east. A concrete path leads from the gate to a panelled painted timber door positioned to the south-east of the façade; the upper half of the door contains two glazed panels. The fenestration follows a regular pattern, with two windows at first-floor level aligned directly above the ground-floor openings; all four windows are 1/1 double-hung sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes.

Other Elevations and Rear

The building is attached to No. 12 Charlemont Square East on the north-west and to No. 10 on the south-east. Access to the rear north-east elevation is limited, but where visible it shows a single-storey flat-roof rear return at the north-west end of the two-bay elevation, projecting north-east to the boundary of an enclosed rear yard. A planked painted timber door in the random-coursed rock-faced stone boundary walling provides access from a rear route into the yard. The rear elevation retains its original random-coursed rock-faced walling, with one timber sash window visible at first-floor level. The rear return has a smooth rendered finish. The yard boundary walling is in near-original condition and retains a segmental arch red brick drainage feature.

Setting and Group Value

No. 11 forms part of a formally planned arrangement of mill workers' dwellings and shops. Each house in the square is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling and hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. Rear yards are generally larger than the front yards and are enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with square-headed door openings onto a wide rear access route, though rear façades are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. Front façades remain nearly uniform along the east and west terraces. The five larger buildings at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square East and one at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square West have traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses wide, but its buildings are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired structures. The central green is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the south-east and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911; Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the south-east of the playground.

Historical and Social Context

The history of the site predates the square itself. The area was first developed in 1761 when a Mr John Pollock opened a woollen mill and bleach green, the site at that time being known simply as "The Green." It was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map in the 1830s, very few buildings had been erected; the only significant structures recorded were Mount Caulfield House 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 linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later wrote that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the Bessbrook site for its water power, surrounding population, and flax cultivation. His layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson established Bessbrook as a social experiment in model living, bringing workers from the surrounding countryside and providing them with good housing, recreational facilities, and educational provision at the Institute. He famously stipulated that the village would have none of the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police. In lieu of a public house he distributed milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers and provided well-stocked shops (located at Nos 1–5 Charlemont Square East). The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement 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.

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

Construction of Charlemont Square

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 does not show Charlemont Square, but construction had commenced by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year recorded Charlemont Square West (described as "new row") as the only completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it were then unoccupied. The remaining buildings, including No. 11 on the eastern terrace, were completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions. The square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate a rapid 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. This expansion was partly driven by the boom in the local linen industry during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off. In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares, and in 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him the principal employer and landowner in the village.

The architect of the houses is not known with certainty. C. E. B. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been limited to expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

History of No. 11

No. 11 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms Mary Matthews and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, but the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan depicts the building in its current layout, with a tennis ground shown within the central green. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by Joseph Livingstone, employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company as a Linen Lapper; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. From 1928 the house was occupied by a Ms Lily Byrne, whose family continued to reside there until at least the 1970s.

During the Second World War the mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company continued to retain ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when properties 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 was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972 (the mill building was subsequently occupied by the British Army). No. 11 was purchased by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72).

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. Around 1980 the stone façade was repointed as part of general restoration work. In 1999 the original glazing was replaced with new sliding sash window frames. At the time of the second survey the building continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, despite the addition of a single-storey flat-roof extension to the rear.

Wider Significance

Bessbrook is internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s, and predates the well-known English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), all of which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Charlemont Square formed the centrepiece of the new developments at Bessbrook and, together with the rest of the village, demonstrates an exceptional combination of Quaker philanthropic ideals, industrial history, and planned urban design.