4 College Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

A two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian mill workers' terraced dwelling built around 1890, designed by an unknown architect, though possibly by civil engineer John Hardy. The building is constructed of local Newry Granodiorite stone in random-coursed rock-faced finish with stepped red brick dressings to window and door jambs and stone cills. The pitched roof is covered in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the southwest has been rebuilt in modern rustic brick and carries four terracotta clay pots; another red brick chimney to the northeast bears three buff clay pots and one terracotta clay pot.

The front elevation faces southeast and is flush with the rest of the terrace in a near-symmetrical arrangement. Two windows at first-floor level align with ground-floor openings, all fitted with double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with horns. A panelled painted timber door with two glazed upper panels, brass furniture and a square-headed fanlight sits centrally, with a window to its southwest side. The modest front yard is paved and enclosed by red brick dwarf walling topped with hooped painted metal railings and a similar gate.

The building features flush eaves with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Metal rainwater goods serve the front southeast elevation, with uPVC to the rear; half-round guttering discharges to circular section downpipes. The northwest elevation comprises a two-storey rear return projecting to the site boundary, added around 1992 in L-plan form. This rear return has windows to its southwest and northwest elevations with a sheeted timber door, and the rear yard is now covered with corrugated Perspex. The rear elevation displays rough-cast cement render with top-opening timber casement windows, considerably altered from original.

No. 4 forms part of College Square North, a formally designed late-Victorian planned square of 53 mill workers' dwellings built around 1890. The northern terrace, comprising twelve houses of which No. 4 is part, consists of distinctly larger two-storey buildings with steeply pitched roofs compared to the other terraces. The square is arranged on three sides around a central bowling green, playground and lawn, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. Each dwelling is set back from the perimeter public road with a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling and hooped metal railings, and a rear yard typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling. The central area is divided into three sections with a bowling pavilion and green to the northwest, a lawn to the southeast, and an open children's playground at the centre featuring three granite monuments commemorating the mill's history and notable workers.