24 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co. Armagh, BT35 7AF

24 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of the western terrace of Charlemont Square, a formally planned square of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The house is listed along with its yard walling, and sits within the Bessbrook Conservation Area.

Architecture and Materials

The building is of L-plan form, facing northeast. The walls are constructed in generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate — with painted red brick dressings, painted stone cills, and stepped red brick surrounds to the gauged-brick cambered door and window openings. The roof is covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section red brick chimney stack with two black clay pots rises to the northwest. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course, and rainwater is carried by half-round uPVC guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by painted smooth-rendered dwarf walling with a precast painted concrete coping. A plain hooped painted foot gate is hung on slim posts to the southeast, with a concrete path leading to a planked painted timber door; above the door is a square-headed timber panel in place of a fanlight. Windows at both ground and first floor are double-hung sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes.

To the northwest, the building is attached to No. 25 Charlemont Square West. To the southeast, it is attached to No. 23. Access to the southwest-facing rear elevation is limited, but where visible it consists of rough cement-rendered walling with timber-topped or side-opening uPVC casement windows with concrete cills. A sheeted painted timber door in the rear boundary wall leads from the rear access route to a narrow L-shaped yard. The rear return has a fibre cement tile roof, uPVC fascia and sheeted uPVC soffit, and is fitted with uPVC side-opening casement windows at both ground and first floor levels facing southwest. A single window to the first floor of the main rear facade is also visible to the northwest of the rear return.

The building retains its external Victorian character despite the replacement of the original front railings and roof slates, and the addition of a large two-storey rear return, added around 1997. The current sliding sash window frames were installed around 2000.

Setting

No. 24 forms part of Charlemont Square West, one of the three terraces enclosing the square's central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by 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 enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades across the square are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform, with five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West having traditional shop fronts at ground floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace, the shortest at only eight buildings wide, consists of distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings.

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, including a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

Historical Background

The history of Bessbrook as a settlement dates to 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a Mr. John Pollock. The site was then known simply as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records very few buildings at Bessbrook at that time — principally Mount Caulfield House (the residence of the Nicholson family) 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, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began to build housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), described his decision 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." His layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning and developing Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Bessbrook was established as a model village in several phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson possessed, in the words of one historian, a "typical Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic expectation" in providing jobs and good working conditions for his employees, and Bessbrook functioned as a social experiment where workers could live and work in contentment. Richardson's philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement. Bessbrook is still referred to as a village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police — a condition Richardson imposed from the outset. In exchange, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops (located at numbers 1–5 Charlemont Square East), and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement 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 boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory whilst increasing the size of his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the main employer and principal landowner at Bessbrook 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 two-storey and two-and-a-half-storey houses were constructed along the north, west, and eastern sides of an open green intended as a recreational space (a tennis ground was depicted within the green on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906). The architect of the houses is not known with certainty; it has been suggested that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at 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 using Newry Granodiorite from a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite is of notably 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 was not yet 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 — captioned "new row" — was the only side of the square then completed, though each of its 26 buildings remained unoccupied. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to adhere to specific lease conditions: each house possessed "a garden [or yard] containing an eighth of an acre, and when the tenant enters into possession he is required to sign an agreement which contains certain stipulations in regard to the keeping of fowl and pigs, so that they may not be found in the quarters occupied by the family or in the yard. He can have a pig-stye and fowl-run in the garden if he pleases. Another binding clause places him under obligation to send his children to school until they are old enough for mill work."

History of No. 24

No. 24 Charlemont Square West was constructed around 1862. The Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Alexander Geddis, valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed with some frequency over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The building was depicted on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of Bessbrook (1906) in its current layout. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by Mary Donaghy, employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company as a linen spreader; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The Donaghy family continued to reside at No. 24 until 1968.

During the 20th century, Bessbrook Mill continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War the mill workers supplied cloth for 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 were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. These sales were driven by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 24 Charlemont Square West was purchased outright by William J. Graham in 1968 and was revalued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72).

The house was listed in 1981 and was included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area when it 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 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 in 1895, which "have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world." Bessbrook is internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s and predating Port Sunlight and Bourneville by several decades.

At the time of the Second Survey the building continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, notwithstanding the two-storey rear extension added around 1997.