5 Fountain St., Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 5 Fountain Street is a modest two-storey semi-detached former schoolmaster's dwelling, built between 1861 and 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms one half of a symmetrical pair together with the attached No. 6 Fountain Street, the two houses together forming a rectangular plan facing northeast onto College Square. The building is finished in painted lined cement render to the front elevation and painted smooth render elsewhere, with a fibre cement tile roof and angled black clay ridge tiles.

The front elevation is the principal facade and faces northeast onto College Square. The pair of houses shares a central bay, which features a half-dormer at first floor level above a shared ground floor window; both openings contain pairs of top-opening uPVC casement windows divided by a wide mullion, marking the boundary between the two properties. To the southeast of the shared window, the entrance door to No. 5 opens onto two granite steps and is fitted with a uPVC door with a square-headed fanlight above. A single-bay gabled block projects narrowly forward to the southeast, carrying a decorative timber bargeboard to the gable and a top-opening uPVC casement window at first floor level aligned with a taller equivalent window at ground floor. Projecting eaves are supported on decorative moulded timber corbels, and the decorative bargeboards to the gables, including the shared central dormer, feature heavy moulded timbers with two-stage droplets to the ends, though the main gable of No. 5 has replacement plain timber ends. Metal half-round guttering discharges to circular section downpipes.

The southeast elevation faces onto a front garden enclosed along Fountain Street by random-coursed rock-faced stone walling with a decorative stone coping of alternating squared and angled blocks. This elevation consists of a pitched roof block with a rectangular section rendered chimney at the centre of the roof ridge — carrying three terracotta clay pots and one black clay pot — and two equally spaced top-opening uPVC casement windows at ground floor level. A modest monopitched boiler house is attached to the southwest of this elevation.

The rear elevation faces southwest directly onto Thomas Street and is symmetrical with the rear elevation of No. 6 to the northwest. It consists of a two-storey gabled block to the southeast and a two-storey flush monopitched extension to the northwest, added around 1980, which bridges the gabled blocks at the rear. The gabled block has a top-opening uPVC casement window with a painted stone cill at first floor level. The monopitched block has a three-part uPVC casement window at ground floor level with a painted slim concrete cill, a similar window directly above at first floor, and a uPVC door to the southeast. Walling here is painted smooth cement render with flush eaves. A curved section of original stone walling to the footpath is attached at the southeast end of the rear elevation. The northwest elevation is the party wall shared with No. 6 Fountain Street.

All windows throughout the building are uPVC casement with granite or painted stone cills, and all roof drainage is in metal.

Each house has a private front and side garden. The shared main access is from a paved path to the northeast, running northwest from a foot gate on Fountain Street; this gate is a painted metal scrollwork gate hung on decorative concrete pillars, with hooped metal railings to the northeast side of the shared path. Individual gardens are laid to lawn with some mature shrubs and are generally enclosed by modern fenestrated block walling. Separate painted metal foot gates hung on square-section rendered pillars open from the northeast of each garden onto individual concrete paths leading to the separate entrance doors. The garden of No. 5 is enclosed along Fountain Street to the southeast by the rock-faced stone walling described above. The garden of No. 6 is enclosed to the northwest by the side wall of the former school building.

The building faces directly onto an area of garden belonging to the former schoolhouse, which is planted with mature shrubs and trees and enclosed by galvanised hooped metal railings. The Institute building stands on the opposite side of College Square. No. 5 Fountain Street is located within the Bessbrook Conservation Area at the southeast end of College Square, a formally designed late-Victorian square consisting in total of 53 historic mill workers' dwellings arranged on three sides around a central bowling green and playground, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The design and proportions of the pair of schoolmaster's dwellings mirror those of the adjacent former schoolhouse, and together they share considerable group value with the wider College Square ensemble.

Despite the use of uPVC windows and fibre cement roof slates, the building retains well-designed proportions, modest decorative detailing, and some original internal joinery, all of which give it architectural character.

The dwelling was constructed as part of the planned model village of Bessbrook, an enterprise begun in the 1840s by the prominent linen merchant John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891) of Lambeg, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. The development of industry on the site dates from 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a Mr. John Pollock. The site was 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 at Bessbrook; the only significant structures shown were Mount Caulfield House, the residence of the Nicholson family, and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

Richardson effectively founded the village of Bessbrook in 1845 when he purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. In his own words, he "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." The village was established as a social experiment and laid out in a number of phases, beginning with Fountain Street in the 1840s. The architect responsible for the majority of the housing at Bessbrook is not known, though Richardson's layout 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 aims led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook in the hope of improving their circumstances. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — and in exchange for keeping the settlement free of alcohol, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house at 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 following the purchase of his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged both his factory and his workforce as a result. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson by the mid-1860s the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers, and between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses increasing from 73 to 296.

The schoolhouse at College Square West had originally been constructed in 1853, predating most of the surviving housing in the village, and was considerably enlarged in 1875 to cope with the increased population. The adjoining school cottages at Nos. 5 and 6 Fountain Street were constructed as residences for the local schoolmasters between 1861 and 1862. Although not depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, they were included in Griffith's Valuation of 1862, which recorded that No. 5 was initially valued at £7 and leased by the Richardson estate to Elizabeth Russell, who was employed as a schoolteacher. The occupants of No. 5 changed frequently over the following four decades, and by the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by national schoolteacher Robert Roleston. The 1911 Census of Ireland described No. 5 as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms with no outbuildings. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted Nos. 5 and 6 in their current arrangement and noted that each house then possessed a small shed to the rear; the central extension block at the rear was not added until around 1980.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value of No. 5 was increased to £11 and 10 shillings, at which time the building continued to be leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to the Roleston family. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of most buildings in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the post-war downturn in the local textile market — which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972 — necessitated the sale of much of the village's housing to private individuals and firms. Having occupied No. 5 as a teacher's cottage for over 60 years, the Roleston family purchased the property outright from the Bessbrook Spinning Company in around 1968. The Rolestons are understood to have continued teaching at the adjoining schoolhouse until the 1970s, when the building was closed following extensive bomb damage. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the total rateable value of No. 5 stood at £14. The two-storey rear extension was added to Nos. 5 and 6 around 1980. The buildings were subsequently listed in 1981 and 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.

The carefully planned development of Bessbrook, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, is recorded as having influenced the design of the famous English model villages at 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. Bessbrook's development pre-dates both Port Sunlight and Bourneville, and No. 5 Fountain Street is therefore of local historical and social importance as part of this early and internationally significant planned mill village.