18 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

18 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1883. The architect is unknown, though it may have been designed by John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881. The listing covers the house itself together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The house is built in a random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite-like stone), with stepped red brick dressings, painted stone windowsills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings for the door and windows. The roof is finished in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. A replacement rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest carries two black clay pots. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with a cast iron circular-section downpipe at the front southwest elevation.

The front elevation faces southwest, is near-symmetrical, and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. It has a regular fenestration pattern: one window at ground floor level and two windows at first floor level, aligned above the ground floor entrance and window. The entrance is an eight-panelled painted timber door with black iron furniture and a square-headed fanlight above, positioned at the southeast end of the façade. Windows to the front are generally top-opening timber casements; those to the rear are uPVC casements.

A modest paved front yard is enclosed by replacement hooped galvanised metal railings with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to the front door.

To the northwest the house is attached to No. 19 College Square East, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 17 College Square East.

The building is L-shaped in plan, with a two-storey pitched-roof rear return added around 1986, and a covered rear yard to the northeast. The rear yard is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling and accessed through a painted sheet metal door from a rear access route. The yard is now covered with a monopitched corrugated Perspex and sheet metal roof and is reduced to a single bay in width at its northwest end. There is a single top-opening casement window at first floor level on the northeast elevation, and a single side-opening timber casement window on the northeast gable of the rear return, also at first floor level. Rear elevations are generally finished in roughcast cement render with concrete sills and uPVC casement windows.

The building retains its essential character despite the replacement of original natural roof slates, front door and windows, and the addition of the large rear extension.

Setting and Group Value

No. 18 is one of twenty-three similar houses forming the eastern terrace of College Square, which together with Bessbrook Town Hall (the old Institute building) to the southeast makes up the east side of the square. College Square as a whole comprises 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged in east, north and west terraces around a central bowling green, playground and lawn. 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. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to follow the gentle relief of the site. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. The northern terrace is the shortest at twelve houses wide, and its houses are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey buildings. Rear yards to each dwelling are enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear façades are generally much altered, while front façades remain nearly uniform along the eastern terrace.

The central area of the square is divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with established trees along the northwest boundary. To the southeast is a lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings. In the centre is an open children's playground containing three granite monuments. One monument records: "erected A.D. 1911 in respectful memory of George Wright, Head Mason. John McClelland, Head Millwright. Michael Boyle, Flax Buyer. Who each faithfully served the Bessbrook firm for nearly 50 years. Also Robert Ross, Mill Manager. Austin Kennedy, Rougher." A second records: "The garden in memory of James N. Richardson is arranged by his wife as a playground for the children of Bessbrook whom he loved November 1927," with an inscription on the opposite side noting that this was the last stone cut from the Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently moved to the square from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

Historical Context

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761, when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green at a site then simply known as "The Green," later renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, very few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; the only significant structures shown were Mount Caulfield House and a number of 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, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, in his own words, "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town, so on looking around, fixed upon a place near Newry… with water power and a thick population around, and in a country district where flax was cultivated in considerable quantities." Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and 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. Richardson's philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor and unqualified from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, intending to give them the means to improve their circumstances.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police — because Richardson banned alcohol from the settlement. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Charlemont Square East, and arranged for milk, tea and cocoa to be distributed to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and no public house exists at Bessbrook to this day. Police were not stationed there 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 boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the village population rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses grew from 73 to 296. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house this expanding workforce, and College Square was subsequently laid out around 1883 to accommodate further growth. The mid-1880s were described in the Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide as "a period of intense building activity in the village" in which "the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established." Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. College Square takes its name from the Primary School on its west side, erected in 1849.

The houses were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, using Newry Granodiorite from a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. This local granite was used in the construction of most buildings at Bessbrook and is of high enough quality to have been used in the building of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool. College Square's houses were first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883.

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 specific conditions: keeping of fowl and pigs was restricted to purpose-built runs and sties in the garden and was not permitted in the living quarters or yard; and tenants were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 18 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. James Barron, valued at £5 and 10 shillings — a valuation that remained unchanged until the 1950s. The occupancy of the house changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the building as occupied by Sarah Ann Brown, a damask weaver employed at Richardson's factory, describing it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the building remained valued at £5 and 10 shillings, still occupied by Sarah A. Brown.

During the Second World War the mill workers were engaged in producing cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of its housing stock until the 1960s, when post-war decline in the textile market led to the gradual sale of the dwellings along College Square, the majority of which were purchased by a Mr. George Preston around 1969. The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. No. 18 was purchased outright by George Preston in 1969. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) its rateable value had risen to £8, and the house was occupied by a Ms. Mary E. Richardson.

No. 18 College Square East was listed in 1981. Bessbrook was designated a Conservation Area in 1983 in recognition of its historical significance as a planned mill village and its distinct form and character. The two-storey modern rear return was added around 1986.

Broader Significance

College Square and the wider planned village of Bessbrook are of considerable local, national and international historical importance. Bessbrook is recognised both as a model village founded on Quaker ideological principles and for its connections to the linen industry centred on Bessbrook Mill. The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide notes that the carefully planned development of Bessbrook — including the uniform terraces of Charlemont Square and College Square — influenced the design of the famous English model villages of 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."