20 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

20 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of one of the most historically significant planned industrial settlements in the British Isles. The house forms part of Charlemont Square, a formally designed square of 66 buildings arranged along north, east and west terraces around a central green, constructed to house workers at Bessbrook Mill. The listing extends to the house itself together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The house is built in an L-plan form facing southwest, with a large two-storey rear return added in around 1984. The main walls are built in generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate, a stone of high enough quality to have been used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Red brick dressings frame the openings throughout, with painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to the gauged-brick cambered door and window openings.

The front northwest-facing elevation is near-symmetrical and flush with the main terrace. It is set narrowly back from the larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings at the southeastern end of the terrace. The windows here are double-hung timber sliding sash with window horns and exposed sash boxes, installed in their current form in 1999. The panelled painted timber front door sits to the southeast of the facade, with two glazed upper sections, black iron door furniture, and a rectangular fanlight above. Two first-floor windows align directly above the ground-floor openings.

To the rear southeast elevation and the rear return, the finish changes to roughcast cement render, with top-opening timber casement windows. The roof is pitched with fibre cement slates and angled black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original slates. 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, and rainwater is discharged via half-round guttering to circular-section downpipes: cast iron rainwater goods to the front southwest elevation, and uPVC rainwater goods to the northeast elevation and rear return.

The modest front yard is paved and enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling topped with plain hooped painted metal railings. A slim metal-posted foot gate to the southeast gives onto a concrete path leading to the front door. To the rear, a narrow L-shaped yard — reduced to a single bay in width at its northwestern edge — is accessed through a planked painted timber door set in smooth rendered boundary walling from the rear access route. A monopitch corrugated metal roof covers the area to the northeast of the rear return, with an open well yard beyond. The northeast rear facade is generally smooth cement rendered with timber top- and side-opening casement windows; a single window on the northwest side of the rear return is visible at first-floor level, with no windows visible to the southeast.

The house is attached to No. 21 Charlemont Square East on the northwest and to No. 19 on the southeast.

Setting and Group Value

No. 20 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 east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to respect the subtle relief of the site. The northern terrace, though the shortest at only eight houses wide, is composed of distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform, while rear facades are considerably more varied, having been altered with extensions of different shapes and sizes over the years.

Each house along the square is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling and hooped metal railings. Rear yards are generally enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. The central green is now laid to lawn, enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with established trees along its boundary. A children's playground to the southeast contains a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911, and Bessbrook's War Memorial stands centrally to the southeast of the playground.

Historical Background

The origins of Bessbrook as an industrial settlement date to 1761, when a Mr John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green at what was 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, little had been built at Bessbrook beyond Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it is known today 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, purchased one of the derelict mills at the site and began constructing housing for his factory workers. Richardson later explained that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and deliberately chose a rural location near Newry with water power, a local flax-growing tradition, and a surrounding population from which to draw workers. He described his intentions in both pragmatic and altruistic terms: by providing his workers with good living standards he hoped to ensure productive and harmonious relations between employer and employed. According to the historian Harrison, Richardson's philanthropic spirit led him to draw the poor, the unqualified and even beggars from the surrounding countryside, in the hope of encouraging them to improve their circumstances.

Bessbrook was laid out in phases, beginning with Fountain Street in the 1840s. The identity of the architect responsible for the majority of the housing remains unknown, though Richardson's approach to planning was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for laying out Philadelphia in the late 17th century. C. E. B. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his involvement may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces along Charlemont Square were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

Bessbrook became celebrated as a model village founded on Quaker ideological principles, and is famously described as a village without the "Three Ps": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for police to be stationed there. In place of alcohol, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Nos. 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 no public house exists in Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the sharp growth in Richardson's workforce. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses from 73 to 296. This growth was partly driven by the American Civil War (1861–65), during which access to American cotton was cut off, causing a boom in the Irish linen industry. Richardson used the opportunity to greatly enlarge his factory while simultaneously expanding the village. In 1863 he became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company following the purchase of his brother's shares, and in 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him both the principal employer and the dominant landowner at Bessbrook by the mid-1860s.

Griffith's Valuation of 1862 records that Charlemont Square West — described as a "new row" — was the only side of the square to have been completed at that date, and that all 26 of its houses remained unoccupied. The remainder of the square, including the eastern terrace of which No. 20 forms part, was completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

Every 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 various stipulations: the keeping of fowl and pigs was regulated such that they could not be kept in the family quarters or the 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 to work at the mill. Each house had a garden or yard of approximately one eighth of an acre.

No. 20 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Hugh Williamson, at a rateable value of £5 and 10 shillings. Its occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though its valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan depicts the house in its current layout. By 1911, according to the Census of Ireland, No. 20 was occupied by William Blakely, a linen factory labourer, whose entire family were employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company as winders, dressers and card cutters. The census building return classified the house as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The Blakely family continued to reside at No. 20 until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, and during the Second World War its workers were engaged in supplying cloth for military uniforms. From the 1960s onward, the post-war decline in the textile industry led the Bessbrook Spinning Company to begin selling its housing. The majority of houses along Charlemont Square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970. No. 20 was among these, purchased outright by Morrow in 1970 at a valuation of £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army.

The house was listed in 1981. Bessbrook Conservation Area was designated in 1983 in recognition of the village'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 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 contemporary with or earlier than these English examples, giving it international as well as local and national significance.

Alterations and Condition

The house underwent an extensive renovation in around 1980, which included repointing of its stone facade and the installation of cast iron rainwater goods. The two-storey rear return was added in around 1984. The sliding sash window frames were replaced in 1999. The original roof slates have been replaced with fibre cement. Despite these alterations, the building retains its essential external Victorian character.