31 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

31 Charlemont Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house built between 1862 and 1866 in Bessbrook, County Armagh. The listing covers the house itself together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

The house is L-plan in form, facing southwest, with a large two-storey rear return projecting to the northeast. Its walls are built in generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate, the same stone used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Painted red brick dressings frame the door and window openings, with painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads; the window heads have largely been squared off with bands of painted smooth cement render to their surrounds. The roof is pitched with natural slates and angled black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section red brick chimney with a single terracotta pot rises to the northwest. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course below. Cast iron rainwater goods — half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes — serve the principal elevations, with uPVC rainwater goods to the rear northeast elevation.

The front elevation faces southwest and is near-symmetrical, sitting flush with the main terrace line, which is itself set slightly back from the larger shop buildings at the southeastern end of the terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling topped by plain hooped painted metal railings. A foot gate hung on slim metal posts to the southeast gives onto a paved path leading to a four-panelled painted timber door with brass furniture and a rectangular fanlight above. A window sits to the northwest of the door at ground-floor level. At first-floor level, two windows align directly above the ground-floor openings. All front windows are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes; the current sash frames were installed in 1999.

The northwest side of the building is attached to No. 32 Charlemont Square East. The southeast side is attached to No. 30 Charlemont Square East. The rear northeast elevation, where visible, has a single-bay two-storey pitched-roof return at the southeast projecting into the rear yard, with a painted timber soffit and fascia. Access to the rear is through a planked painted timber door set within smooth-rendered boundary walling, leading to a narrow L-shaped yard, reduced to a single bay in width at its northwest extent. A panelled and glazed painted timber back door is set on the northwest side of the rear return. The rear elevation is generally finished in smooth cement render with timber top- or side-opening casement windows.

No. 31 is one of twenty-seven similar two-storey houses which, together with five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings to the southeast, form the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square. The square as a whole comprises 66 buildings in total — dwellings and shops arranged along its east, north and west sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to respect the gentle relief of the site. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform in appearance. Five larger buildings at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square West carry 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. Rear facades across the square are much altered with extensions of various shapes and sizes. Each dwelling is generally served by a larger rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling, with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. The central area of the square is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees at its boundary. A children's playground to the southeast includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911, and Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

The development of Bessbrook has its origins in 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 — known as Bess — and the nearby Camlough River. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records very few buildings at Bessbrook at that time, noting only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills. The village was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) and, in his own words, had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and so chose a country district near Newry with water power, a local population, and flax cultivation nearby. 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.

Richardson established Bessbrook as a social experiment and model village, providing workers with good living conditions in order to foster good relations between employer and employed. He brought in the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside, hoping to encourage self-improvement. He also ensured the village was free of the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for a police presence — substituting recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Nos 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and the distribution of milk, tea and cocoa to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s; to this day Bessbrook has no public house, and police were not stationed there until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly expanded both his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the main employer and principal landowner in Bessbrook by the mid-1860s. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers; the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 in 1861 to 2,215 in 1871, and the number of houses from 73 to 296 in the same period. The architect of the housing is not known with certainty; Charles Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been limited to mill building expansion. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

Griffith's Valuation of 1862 noted that Charlemont Square West — captioned "new row" — was the only completed side of the square at that date, and that all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied. The remaining sides, including Charlemont Square East, were 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 agreements containing stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs — animals could be kept in a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden but not in the family quarters or yard — and were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work. Each house had a garden or yard containing an eighth of an acre.

No. 31 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr John Black and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed with frequency over the following decades though the valuation remained unchanged until the 1950s. In 1911 the Census of Ireland records the house as occupied by the Collins family, employed as rollers and weavers at the Bessbrook Spinning Company; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The Collins family continued at No. 31 until 1945, when a Mr Noel Walsh took occupation, remaining there until at least the 1970s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current layout.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition. During the Second World War the mill workers supplied cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the Charlemont Square dwellings until the 1960s, when they began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970. The post-war downturn in the local textile market led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 31 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72).

The building was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area designated in 1983, which recognised 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, settlements which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Bessbrook is thus considered internationally significant as an early planned mill village.

Around 1980 the building underwent an extensive renovation that included the repointing of its stone facade and the addition of cast iron rainwater goods. The current sliding sash window frames date from 1999. At the time of the second survey the house remained in use as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, notwithstanding the addition of a two-storey extension to the rear.