3 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 3 Wakefield Terrace is a two-storey, two-bay terraced house built around 1865 to designs by an unknown architect, forming part of a terrace of six broadly identical dwellings (Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace). The terrace occupies a corner site on a gently sloping plot at the south-western end of Fountain Street and south-eastern end of Charlemont Square, Bessbrook, County Armagh. The house was substantially rebuilt, extended to the rear, and given a more polished front elevation around 1926, at which point the row was also renamed from its original designation of Fountain Place to Wakefield Terrace. The house was listed in 1981 and falls within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983. A renovation in 1995 included the installation of new sliding sash window frames throughout.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Bessbrook takes its name from Elizabeth (Bess) Pollock, wife of John Pollock, who opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site in 1761, with the nearby Camlough River providing the "Brook" element of the name. The first Ordnance Survey maps of the 1830s record very little development at the location beyond Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it stands today was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began constructing housing for his factory workers. Richardson later explained that he had a strong aversion to being responsible for a factory population in a large town, and deliberately chose a rural location near Newry with water power, an existing local population, and flax cultivation in the surrounding countryside. His layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Bessbrook was designed and built as a social experiment — a model village intended to provide workers with good living standards, healthy conditions, and moral guidance. Richardson's philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor and unemployed from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook. The village became famous as a settlement without the "Three P's": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore, in Richardson's view, no need for police. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Charlemont Square East, and distributed milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers. The population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day Bessbrook has no public house. 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 disruption to American cotton supplies drove demand for linen. Richardson expanded his factory and workforce considerably. In 1865, Lord Charlemont sold him the remainder of the Camlough Estate, making Richardson the dominant employer and landowner in Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the growing workforce. Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace (then Fountain Place) were built during this same period. Between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses in the village grew from 73 to 296.

Every house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. Each dwelling had between three and five rooms and came with a yard or garden of approximately one-eighth of an acre. Tenancy agreements included stipulations regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs (which were not permitted in the family's living quarters or yard, though a pigsty and fowl-run were allowed in the garden), and an obligation to send children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 3 Wakefield Terrace (then part of Fountain Place) does not appear in Griffith's Valuation of 1862 but was first recorded in the Annual Revisions of 1866. Early 20th-century photographs show that Nos. 1 and 6 of the original terrace were single-storey cottages, while the houses between — including the predecessor of No. 3 — formed a two-storey terrace. The predecessor of No. 3 was originally valued at £4 10s and was occupied by a Mr. William McConnell. By the 1911 Census, the site was occupied by William Cherry, a flax dresser at Richardson's factory. The census building return described a second-class dwelling of three rooms. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the house as a simple terraced structure with no outbuildings.

In 1926 the Annual Revisions valuer recorded that the houses along Fountain Place were being rebuilt — it is not known with certainty whether this involved complete reconstruction or substantial refurbishment. The row was renamed Wakefield Terrace at this time, and the current two-storey rear return was added as part of the works. Following rebuilding, No. 3 was valued at £6 and leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Joseph Owens. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value was raised to £10 10s, and the house was by then occupied by a Mr. Thomas Brown, who remained at the address until at least the 1970s. Thomas Brown purchased the house outright around 1968. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the total rateable value stood at £16.

During the 20th century the Bessbrook mill continued to expand and gained international recognition, with mill workers supplying cloth for military uniforms during the Second World War. The post-war decline in the local textile market led the Bessbrook Spinning Company to begin selling off its housing stock from the 1960s onward, and the mill itself closed in 1972. The Bessbrook Conservation Area was designated in 1983 in recognition of the village'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 — including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square — 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 worldwide.

EXTERIOR

The house is finished throughout in painted lined cement render with square-headed door and window openings and painted stone sills. The roof over the main front block is pitched and covered in fibre cement tiles with angled black clay ridge tiles. The rear return, added around 1926, has a pitched natural slate roof with roll-top terracotta ridge tiles; a valley runs between the front block and the rear return. The eaves are flush, with a painted timber fascia.

There are two chimney stacks to the front block: the south-eastern stack is rectangular in section, built in red brick, and carries a single terracotta clay pot; the north-western stack, which has been rebuilt in rustic brick, carries two terracotta clay pots. The two chimneys to the rear return each carry a single buff clay pot.

Rainwater goods are generally metal, with half-round guttering discharging to a uPVC circular-section downpipe at the front and a square-section cast iron downpipe with decorative trefoil brackets to the rear.

Principal (north-east) elevation

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace and faces north-east. At ground floor level, a window sits to the north-west side of the entrance door. Above the door, a gabled window at first floor level is set in line with the door below. All windows are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash with horns and reduced-height top sashes. The door surround is painted square-headed with plain rectangular-section pilasters and a moulded entablature. The panelled timber door has a glazed top half, a square-headed fanlight above, and is approached by two granite steps directly from the public footpath.

South-east elevation

The south-east side of the building is attached to No. 2 Wakefield Terrace.

South-west (rear) elevation

The rear elevation faces south-west into a rear yard shared with the other houses in the terrace. It consists of the two-storey pitched-roof rear return added around 1926, which abuts the similarly sized front block to the north-east, forming a valley between the two. The rear elevation has a lined cement render finish. At first floor level there is a single sash window to the centre; at ground floor level there are two similarly sized top-opening casement windows. All windows have stone sills. A door to the south-east side of the ground floor windows opens onto a concrete yard. The door is a painted timber door with glazed top and bottom halves. The rear yard contains a modern block-built outbuilding to the south-west with a corrugated metal roof, and a stone-built south-west wall.

North-west elevation

The north-west side of the building is attached to No. 4 Wakefield Terrace.

SETTING

Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace occupy a gently sloping site at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square. Nos. 1–5 face north-east toward Fountain Street and are fronted by the public footpath; Nos. 2–5 share a continuous ridge line. No. 6 faces north-west onto Church Road and is set slightly back from the public footpath. The rear yards are open to neighbouring dwellings and are typically enclosed to the south-west by random-coursed rubble stone walling. A section of the original yard walling facing south-east is rendered and topped by a tall pier with a concrete capping, adjacent to No. 1 Wakefield Terrace.

The village fountain, from which Fountain Street takes its name, is located to the north-east of No. 1. It is square in plan, built in granite ashlar, with cast iron water spouts to each side and a finial to the top. It is surrounded by a rectangular area enclosed by a dwarf granite wall topped with painted metal railings, and the stone trough remains in place.

No. 3 Wakefield Terrace has significant group value as part of the terrace of six houses, and also in relation to the neighbouring terraces on Charlemont Square and Lakeview. Its architectural interest lies in its style, proportions, and ornamentation, though some external alterations have detracted from its character. Its historical interest lies in its authenticity, age, historic importance, and associations with Bessbrook as one of the earliest planned model mill villages in the British Isles.