16 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

16 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1862 by an unknown architect. It forms part of Charlemont Square West, a formally planned square consisting of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The listing covers the house itself, together with its gate, railings and yard walling. The townland is Clogharevan.

Architectural Description

The building is of L-plan form, facing northeast. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate), with painted red brick dressings. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though the window heads are generally now squared off with painted smooth cement render. The roof is pitched, finished in fibre cement slates with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest with a single terracotta pot. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are generally metal with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

A single-storey flat-roofed rear return was added in around 1989. It has a smooth cement render finish, a flat felt-covered roof, and uPVC rainwater goods.

Principal (Northeast) Elevation

The front elevation faces northeast and is near-symmetrical, set flush with the main terrace. A modest front yard is laid to lawn and enclosed by a smooth rendered dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a panelled painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade. The door has two glazed panels to its upper half, brass furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. There is a window opening to the northwest side at ground floor level. At first floor level, two windows align directly above the ground floor openings; all windows are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash with window horns and exposed sash boxes.

Northwest and Southeast Elevations

The building is attached to No. 17 Charlemont Square West on the northwest side, and to No. 15 Charlemont Square West on the southeast side.

Rear (Northeast) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast and is enclosed by a rock-faced random-coursed stone boundary wall to a concrete yard, accessed through a sheeted painted timber door from the rear access route. At ground floor level to the southeast end of the elevation there is a wider-than-standard side-opening casement window with a replacement concrete cill. At first floor level, to the centre of the elevation, there is a double-hung sliding timber sash window. The main rear facade has a smooth rendered finish, painted at ground floor level, with timber casement windows with concrete cills at ground floor level, galvanised half-round metal guttering, and a uPVC circular-section downpipe.

The single-storey rear return projects southwest from the northwest end of the rear facade to the yard boundary wall. On its southeast side it has a painted timber door with a glazed top half, and a top-opening timber casement window to its left.

Setting

No. 16 forms part of Charlemont Square West, one of three terraces — east, north, and west — arranged around a central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter public 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. Each dwelling also has a larger rear yard 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 extensions of various shapes and sizes. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform, with the exception of five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West, which have traditional shop fronts at ground floor level with dwellings above.

The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses wide, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central green is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast, which includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

Historical and Social Context

Bessbrook takes its name from a renaming of the site known originally as "The Green." The name combines "Bess" — after Elizabeth, wife of early mill owner John Pollock — and "Brook," referring to the nearby Camlough River. Industry in the area dates from 1761, when Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site. By the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map in the 1830s, only a handful of significant structures existed: Mount Caulfield House and several 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 a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson had, in his own words, "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and deliberately chose a rural site near Newry with water power and local flax cultivation. 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 established as a model village in phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson's philanthropic approach led him to bring workers from the surrounding countryside — including the poor and unemployed — to live and work at Bessbrook, providing them with good standards of living in the hope of fostering positive relations between employer and employee. He is noted for having distributed milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers, and for providing recreational and educational facilities at the Institute. The village became known as a settlement without the "Three P's": there was no public house, no pawn shop, 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 Bessbrook has no public house. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863, following the purchase of his brother's shares, Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce to take advantage of the opportunity. In 1865, Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him both the main employer and principal landowner in Bessbrook.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the influx of new workers. Between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses from 73 to 296. Brett describes Charlemont Square as the centrepiece of these new developments. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty; Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work 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 directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The Newry Granodiorite used in the construction was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite is of 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 did not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but Griffith's Valuation of 1862 noted that Charlemont Square West — described as "new row" — was the only side of the square then complete, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied at that date. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

Each house in 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 (which were not permitted in the yard or family quarters, but were allowed in a separate pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden), and were also required to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

History of No. 16 Specifically

No. 16 Charlemont Square West was constructed around 1862. Griffith's Valuation records that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Joseph McCandless and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unchanged until the 1950s. The 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan of Bessbrook depicts the building in its current layout, with a tennis ground shown within the central green. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by John Stewart, a gas stoker, whose daughters worked as linen winders and damask weavers; the census building return classified it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the house was occupied by the Ballantine family. In 1951 a Mr Andrew Brady briefly took possession, remaining until 1961, when Patrick Hughes occupied it. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of houses along the square were purchased around 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer. No. 16 was among those purchased outright by Morrow in 1970, at which point its valuation was increased to £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). The sale of the company's housing stock was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of Bessbrook Mill in 1972.

Alterations

Around 1980 the building underwent an extensive renovation that included reslating of the roof, repointing of the stonework, and the addition of cast iron rainwater goods. The current fibre cement roof covering replaced the original slates at this time. The single-storey flat-roofed rear extension was added around 1989. The current sliding sash window frames were installed in 1999.

Significance

No. 16 was listed in 1981 and falls within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village with a 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 — predates and influenced 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. Bessbrook is therefore regarded as internationally significant as an early planned mill village. The building retains its Victorian external character and contributes, along with its neighbouring terrace houses, to an important and cohesive group of local, social, and architectural significance.