5 Charlemont Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 5 Charlemont Square North is a two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house built between approximately 1862 and 1866 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of Charlemont Square, Bessbrook, County Armagh, and the listing extends to the house, gate, railings and yard walling.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building is of L-plan form, facing southeast, constructed in random-coursed rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate) with red brick dressings and painted stone cills. Window openings are square-headed. The roof is pitched, finished in fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles, and has a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northeast fitted with six terracotta clay pots. Projecting eaves have a painted timber fascia and soffit. Metal half-round guttering and circular-section downpipes serve the front southeast elevation; uPVC rainwater goods serve the rear.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and flush with the main terrace. At ground-floor level there are two windows, including an increased-width window to the right-hand side; at first-floor level two windows align with a reduced-size window belonging to the entrance porch. Generally, four-pane top-opening timber casement windows are used to the front southeast elevation, and single timber casements to the rear.

A single-storey projecting gabled side entry porch sits to the southwest end of the front facade, abutting the rendered porch of No. 6 Charlemont Square North to the southwest. The porch is red brick-built, with a decorative painted timber wave-scroll bargeboard with finial and a single top-opening painted timber casement window to the southeast gable. Access is via a panelled painted timber door on the northeast side of the porch; the door has two glazed sections to its upper half and black iron furniture.

To the rear, the building has a two-storey mono-pitched roof rear return at the southwest end of the northwest elevation, abutted by a single-storey monopitched block to the northeast and northwest extending to the yard boundary. The rear northwest elevation is finished in painted smooth cement render. There are two windows on the northwest elevation — one at ground-floor and one at first-floor level, both with painted stone cills — and top-opening timber casement windows generally. Two skylights are visible to the northwest of the pitched roof. A painted timber door set within painted smooth cement-rendered boundary walling to the northwest leads from the rear access route to the rectangular rear yard.

The northeast elevation of the rear return has a single window at first-floor level with a painted stone cill. A mono-pitched extension below this window has a single window and a panelled varnished timber door to the left-hand side. The rear return has flush eaves with a rendered brick corbel course and uPVC rainwater goods. An outbuilding to the northwest of the rear return has a painted timber door with glazed upper half facing northeast. The building is attached on the southwest to No. 6 Charlemont Square North and on the northeast to No. 4 Charlemont Square North.

The front yard is set to lawn and enclosed by a red brick dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on circular-section painted metal posts with cast metal conical caps, positioned centrally. A concrete path leads from the gate to the porch door.

No. 5 is one of eight similar houses arranged in pairs that form the northern terrace of Charlemont Square. These northern terrace houses are the largest in the square — distinctly bigger two-and-a-half-storey paired structures — and are distinguished by abutting gabled side entry porches, large rectangular-section chimneys, and painted stepped red brick quoins to each pair of dwellings. The building retains its external character and some internal fittings, though the original windows have been replaced (the current casement windows were installed in 1999), and render has been applied to the porch and original roof slates replaced.

SETTING

No. 5 forms part of a planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops comprising a formal square made up of east, north and west terraces arranged around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. 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 respect the subtle relief of the site. Five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West have traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. Rear facades are much altered with various extensions of different shapes and sizes; 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 and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees at its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast and 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's origins lie in 1761, when a John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as The Green. It 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; the principal structures were 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 and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later wrote that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the site near Newry for its water power, local population and flax cultivation. Development began with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson's layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning and development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Richardson's philanthropic aims were practical as well as idealistic. He brought poor, unqualified and destitute people from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to improve their circumstances. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and consequently no need for Police — a stipulation that Richardson maintained in exchange for providing 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, and to this day no public house exists at Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly expanded his factory and workforce accordingly. In 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making Richardson both the principal employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses increasing from 73 to 296.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers. Brett describes it as the centrepiece of the new developments. The second edition Ordnance Survey map (1861) does not depict the square, but construction had commenced by 1862: Griffith's Valuation of that year noted that Charlemont Square West (captioned "new row") was the only completed side, with all 26 buildings along it remaining unoccupied. The remaining buildings were completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions.

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 at Bessbrook 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 by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Natural Stone Database records that the houses were built of Newry Granodiorite, produced at a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate; granite from this quarry was of sufficient quality to be used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

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 keeping fowl and pigs — permitted in a pig-sty or fowl-run in the garden but not within the family quarters or yard — and were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 5 Charlemont Square North was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. William Hunter, valued at £8. The occupants changed with frequency over subsequent decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1930s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current layout, including the entrance porch and rear return (which at that time also showed a tennis ground within the central green). The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by Anne Rodgers, whose daughters were employed as schoolteachers at the Old Schoolhouse on College Square West. The census building return described the house as a second-class dwelling consisting of eight rooms.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) a Ms. Eileen McBurney resided at No. 5, by which time the valuation had risen to £9 and 10 shillings. The McBurney family continued to reside at the address until 1970. During the 20th century the mill expanded further, and during the Second World War its workers supplied cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when the dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in approximately 1970. The sale of Bessbrook property was driven by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which preceded the closure of the mill in 1972 (after which the building was occupied by the British Army). No. 5 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970, at which point its valuation was increased to £14 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

No. 5 Charlemont Square North was listed in 1981. The Bessbrook Conservation Area was designated in 1983 in recognition of 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), which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Bessbrook is therefore internationally significant as an early planned mill village, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with — indeed predating — those more widely celebrated examples. At the time of the second survey the building continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character.