4 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

4 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a two-storey, two-bay terraced house finished in painted lined cement render, originally built around 1865 to designs by an unknown architect. The building was substantially rebuilt, extended to the rear, and had its front facade gentrified around 1926. Despite some alteration to external elements, it retains its overall character and good proportions with modest detailing. It forms part of a terrace of six houses, all of similar design and detailing, occupying a prominent corner position at the southwest end of Fountain Street and the southeast end of Charlemont Square. The house also has significant group value with the neighbouring terraces on Charlemont Square and Lakeview.

Architectural Description

The house has a rectangular plan facing northeast, with a two-storey rear return added around 1926. The principal walling throughout is painted lined cement render with square-headed door and window openings, and painted stone cills.

The front (northeast) elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace. On the ground floor, there is a window to the northwest side of the door. Above the door, on the first floor, is a gabled window aligned directly with the door below. All windows are top-opening timber casements. The door itself has a moulded pediment entablature with raised panels to the brackets and a raised triangular panel below. It is a painted four-panelled timber door with a square-headed fanlight and brass furniture, opening directly onto a single stone step and the public footpath.

The southeast elevation is attached to No. 3 Wakefield Terrace, and the northwest elevation is attached to No. 5 Wakefield Terrace.

The rear (southwest) elevation faces into a yard shared with the other houses in the terrace. The two-storey pitched-roof rear return, added around 1926, abuts the similarly sized front block to the northeast, forming a valley between the two. This rear elevation is finished in lined cement render and has a single window to the centre of the first floor and two similar top-opening casement windows to the ground floor, all with stone cills. A door to the southeast side of the ground floor windows opens onto the concrete yard; this is a painted timber door with multiple glazed panes to its upper half. The rear yard has a stone-built southwest wall.

The roof over the main front block is pitched and covered in fibre cement tiles with angled black clay ridge tiles. The rear return has a pitched natural slate roof with roll-top terracotta ridge tiles, and there is a valley where the two roof sections meet. Eaves are flush with a painted timber fascia. The chimney to the northwest is rectangular-section red brick with a single buff clay pot; the chimney to the southeast has been rebuilt in rustic brick and carries two terracotta clay pots. The two red brick chimneys to the rear return each have a single buff clay pot. Rainwater goods are generally cast iron: half-round guttering discharging to a circular-section downpipe at the front, and ogee guttering discharging to a square-section downpipe at the rear, supported by decorative trefoil brackets.

Setting

The terrace of six dwellings occupies a gently sloping site at the southeast end of Charlemont Square. Numbers 1 to 5 face northeast towards Fountain Street and are fronted by the public footpath; numbers 2 to 5 share a continuous ridge line. No. 6 faces northwest onto Church Road, set slightly back from the public footpath. The rear yards are open to neighbouring dwellings and are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling to the southwest. A section of original yard walling facing southeast is rendered, with a tall pier with a concrete capping adjacent to No. 1 Wakefield Terrace. The village fountain, from which Fountain Street takes its name, stands to the northeast of No. 1. It is square in plan, built in granite ashlar with cast iron spouts to each side and a finial to the top, and is surrounded by a rectangular enclosure of dwarf granite walling topped with painted metal railings; a stone trough remains in place.

Historical Background

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761, when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known simply as "The Green." The site was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; the only significant structures depicted were 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 and member of the Religious Society of Friends, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, in his own words, "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 architect of the majority of the housing at Bessbrook is not known, though Richardson's 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 established as a model village in several phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. 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. He provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and arranged for milk, tea, and cocoa to be distributed to his mill workers. Bessbrook is widely known as the village without the "Three P's," reflecting Richardson's stipulation that there would be no public house or pawn shop in the settlement, and therefore no need for a police presence. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day there is 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 after purchasing his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was disrupted, and Richardson greatly enlarged both his factory and his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson by the mid-1860s the main employer and principal landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers. Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace, then known as Fountain Place, were constructed 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 from 73 to 296.

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, requiring that animals not be kept in the family quarters or yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden. Tenants were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 4 Wakefield Terrace had not been built at the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1862 but was first recorded in the Annual Revisions of 1866. Early 20th-century photographs of the terrace show that the buildings at the ends of the row — the predecessors of Nos. 1 and 6 — were originally single-storey cottages, while those in between formed a two-storey terrace. The building that preceded No. 4 was valued at £4 10 shillings and was occupied by a Ms. Susan Patterson. By the time of the 1911 Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by Michael Toner, employed at Richardson's factory as an "oiler"; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting 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 in the process of being rebuilt, though it is not known with certainty whether this involved complete reconstruction or substantial refurbishment. The row was renamed Wakefield Terrace and, following the rebuilding work, No. 4 was valued at £6. The Annual Revisions Town Plan (compiled between approximately 1909 and 1935) records that the house was extended to the rear at this time by the addition of the current two-storey return. The rebuilt house was initially leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms. Sarah Rocks. During the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value of No. 4 was raised to £10 10 shillings, and at that time the building was occupied by a Ms. Mary Cosgrove.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War, the mill workers were tasked with producing cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of its housing stock in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when a post-war downturn in the local textile market began to necessitate the sale of dwellings to private individuals and firms. This decline ultimately led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. Mr. Joseph Irwin purchased No. 4 Wakefield Terrace outright around 1968, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value of the house stood at £14.

No. 4 Wakefield Terrace was 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 noted in the Conservation Area Guide 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 all over the world."