21 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co. Armagh, BT35 7AF

21 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built around 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of Charlemont Square West, the western terrace of a formally planned Victorian square comprising 66 buildings in total, arranged on three sides around a central green and primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The house has a rectangular plan facing northeast and is constructed in 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 — with painted smooth render dressings, painted stone cills, and stepped smooth render surrounds to the square-headed door and window openings.

The pitched roof is now covered in fibre cement slates with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest, now rendered, with a single terracotta pot. The eaves are flush with a painted timber fascia. Rainwater goods at the front are uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes; to the rear, ogee guttering discharges to square-section downpipes.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by a concrete dwarf wall topped by plain hooped galvanised 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 façade. The door has two glazed panels to the upper half, some incorporating coloured glazing, three vertical panels to the lower half, and a square-headed fanlight above. A window opening sits to the northwest at ground floor level. At first floor, two windows align with the ground floor openings and are fitted with uPVC top-opening casement windows.

To the northwest, the building is attached to No. 22 Charlemont Square West. To the southeast, it is attached to No. 20 Charlemont Square West.

The rear elevation faces southwest and consists of a single-bay, two-storey, pitched-roof rear return at the southeast, projecting into the rear yard, with a single timber casement window to the first floor facing southwest. This rear return is abutted to the southwest and northwest by a single-storey monopitch roof of corrugated Perspex covering the extent of the rear yard. A sheeted painted timber door leads from the rear access route into the covered yard. The rear façade is generally finished in painted smooth cement render with uPVC top-opening casement windows. The rear return has fibre cement roof tiles with uPVC fascia, soffit, and rainwater goods.

The building retains its overall external character despite the replacement of the original windows and roof slates with inappropriate modern materials, and the addition of a large two-storey extension to the rear, constructed around 1988.

Setting and significance

No. 21 is one of twenty-five similar houses which, together with a larger two-storey-with-attic shop building to the southeast, form the western terrace of Charlemont Square. The square as a whole consists of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green. The terraces to the east and west are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. To the rear, a larger yard is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear façades across the square are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. The front façades are nearly uniform along the east and west terraces, with five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West having traditional shopfronts at ground floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses wide, but its buildings are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired structures.

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 background

The history of Bessbrook as a settlement dates to 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a Mr John Pollock. The site, then known simply as "The Green", was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records very few buildings at Bessbrook at that time, the principal structures being 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, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, stated that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the Bessbrook site for its water power, surrounding population, and proximity to flax cultivation. His layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. The architect of the majority of the housing in Bessbrook is not known with certainty; it has been suggested that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in the village 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.

Richardson established Bessbrook as a social experiment and model village intended to provide his workers with good living standards in the belief that this would foster good relations between employer and employed. His philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook. The village became widely known as one without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — a condition that the majority of residents voted to preserve in the 1870s. In place of these, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to mill workers. 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 influx of workers brought about by the expansion of the mill during the American Civil War (1861–65), when disruption to cotton supplies caused a boom in the linen industry. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making him both the principal employer and main landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses rising from 73 to 296.

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 various stipulations: pigs and fowl were not to be kept in the parts of the house or yard occupied by the family, though a pigsty and fowl run were permitted in the garden. Tenants were also required to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

Griffith's Valuation of 1862 recorded Charlemont Square West — then captioned "new row" — as the only completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied at the time. The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 did not yet depict Charlemont Square, confirming that construction began around 1862. The remaining terraces were completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions.

No. 21 Charlemont Square West was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms Sarah Adamson and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, but the value of the property remained unaltered until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the building in its current layout (including a tennis ground within the central green). The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 No. 21 was occupied by Hugh McKeown, one of the village's few police sergeants; the census building return described the house 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 a Mr James England, who remained at the address until 1970.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square 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, around 1970. The sale of property was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the mill building was occupied by the British Army. No. 21 Charlemont Square West was purchased outright by a Mr William Walsh in 1970 and was increased in value to £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72).

The building was listed in 1981 and was 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. Bessbrook is internationally significant as an early planned mill village begun in the 1840s, predating the famous English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. During the Second World War, workers at Bessbrook Mill were tasked with supplying cloth for military uniforms.