12 College Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 12 College Square West is a two-storey, two-bay terraced mill workers' dwelling built in local stone around 1874. It was designed by an unknown architect, though the work may be attributable to John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881, who was also responsible for extending the mill. The house is L-plan in form, facing northeast, with a two-storey rear return.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

Bessbrook itself is one of the most historically significant planned industrial settlements in Ireland, and the broader context of the village is essential to understanding this building. The site was originally known as 'The Green' and was renamed Bessbrook after Elizabeth (Bess) Pollock, wife of John Pollock, who opened the first woollen mill and bleach green here in 1761. By the 1830s, when the first Ordnance Survey map was made, the area contained little more than Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it exists today was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his workers. Richardson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, was influenced in his planning by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for laying out Philadelphia in the late 17th century. He intended Bessbrook as a social experiment — a model village where workers could live and work in dignity and contentment. He brought in poor and unskilled people from the surrounding countryside, hoping to improve their circumstances, and provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea and cocoa to his workers. Bessbrook is famously known as a village without the 'Three Ps': Richardson stipulated there would be no public house and no pawnshop, and therefore no need for a police presence. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day there is no public house 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 boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce to take advantage. Lord Charlemont sold him the remainder of the Camlough Estate in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner in the area. Between 1861 and 1871 the village population rose from 637 to 2,215 and the number of houses from 73 to 296. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate these new workers. College Square followed in stages between approximately 1874 and 1890, prompted by further business expansion. Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85, and the mid-1880s are recorded as a period of intense building activity in the village. The terraces forming College Square were built by masons and joiners directly employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The stone used throughout Bessbrook, including at College Square, is Newry Granodiorite, quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This is a high-quality granite that was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. College Square West, comprising numbers 1 to 18, was built in two phases: numbers 1 to 12 first appeared in the Annual Revisions in 1874, and numbers 13 to 18 were added by 1877.

The planned development of Bessbrook — begun in the 1840s and continued through the building of Charlemont Square (1862–66) and College Square (c.1874–c.1890) — is considered to have influenced later English model villages including Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, all of which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning across the world. Both College Square and Charlemont Square could be considered of international importance in this context.

No. 12 College Square West was first let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Robert Burns and was valued at £6. Occupancy changed frequently over subsequent decades. By the 1911 Census the house was occupied by William McMurray, a local assurance agent whose children worked at the mill. The census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of six inhabited rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) it was valued at £7 and 10 shillings and remained with the McMurray family. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in the village until the 1960s, when a post-war downturn in the local textile market led to the gradual sale of properties. The mill eventually closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. The McMurray family purchased No. 12 outright around 1968, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value had risen to £10. The house was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of the village's historical significance as a planned mill village. Around 1997 the building underwent renovation during which the current windows and entrance door were installed.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the 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 a garden or yard (not the living quarters), and tenants were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough to work in the mill. Each house had a garden or yard of approximately one eighth of an acre.

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER AND SETTING

No. 12 forms part of a formally designed and planned late-Victorian square — a rare occurrence in the province — consisting of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged along the north, west and east sides of a central open green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. College Square is itself an important part of the historical development of Bessbrook as a whole. No. 12 is one of 18 similar houses forming the western terrace; it is attached to No. 11 College Square West to the southeast and No. 13 College Square West to the northwest.

The central area of the square is divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and green — added in 1911 — enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at its northwest boundary. To the southeast is a further lawn also enclosed by hooped metal railings. At 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'; the inscription to the opposite side records that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, formerly in the grounds of Bessbrook Mill and recently moved to its current location, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

Each house in the square is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed doorway opening onto a wide rear access route. The eastern terrace comprises 23 dwellings built in a similar style but with some significant differences in detailing; they are stepped in groups of six to follow the subtle relief of the site and terminate at their southeastern end with the village Town Hall (the former Institute building). The northern terrace is the shortest side of the square at 12 houses wide; though similar in style, these are distinctly larger two-storey buildings. The former school building is located at the southeast end of the western terrace.

EXTERNAL DESCRIPTION

The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite throughout. Dwellings along the western terrace are grouped in pairs; each pair is symmetrical, with the two entrance doors placed centrally, flanked on opposite sides by single windows at ground-floor level. Each pair is set between raised roof verges in red brick with clay tile copings, rising to rectangular-section chimneys at apex level. The line of the verge continues vertically down each front northeast facade as stepped red brick quoins, with recessed downpipes flanking each paired set of dwellings.

Door and window openings are square-headed with gauged brick arches and flush keystones. Jambs have stepped red brick dressings with painted stone cills. The roof is pitched, with fibre cement tiles to the front elevation, natural slate to the rear, and roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The rectangular-section chimney to the southeast is of red and buff brick with recessed panels of buff brick, a raised corbel course of red and buff brick below a decorative chimney cap, and six buff clay pots. The eaves are flush, with a double red brick course, a single buff brick course, and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above — though this decorative eaves course is now masked across the terrace by modern electrical wiring.

Rainwater goods to the front northeast elevation are generally cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes; the downpipe to the front is cast iron and recessed into the stepped red brick quoins. uPVC rainwater goods are used to the rear southwest elevation.

PRINCIPAL (NORTHEAST) ELEVATION

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace and is near-symmetrical with a regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level are positioned in line with the ground-floor openings. All windows have top-opening uPVC casements. At ground-floor level, the door surround has a stepped red brick surround and gauged brick arch with a flush keystone to the head; the window to the southeast side of the door has flush red brick detailing beneath the cill. A paved path from the entrance gate leads to a panelled, painted timber door with two glazed panels to its upper half, brass furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. The modest gravelled front yard is enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the northwest.

SOUTHWEST (REAR) ELEVATION

The rear elevation faces southwest. At first-floor level there is a uPVC top-opening casement window in line with a similar window at ground-floor level to the southeast. The two-storey rear return projects from the northwest end of the elevation into an enclosed L-shaped concrete rear yard. The southeast side of the rear return has a two-part side-opening uPVC casement window at ground-floor level and a similar three-part window in line at first-floor level. There is a six-panelled painted timber door at the southwest end of the rear return and no visible openings to the northwest. The rear elevation generally has a roughcast cement render finish with uPVC casement windows and slim concrete cills. The yard boundary wall to the southwest is of random-coursed rock-faced stone, with a painted sheeted timber door leading to the rear access route. Numerous television aerials visible across the square detract from the setting.

MATERIALS

Walling: Newry Granodiorite. Roof: fibre cement to front, natural slate to rear. Rainwater goods: cast iron to front, uPVC to rear. Windows: uPVC casements throughout.

ALTERATIONS AND CONDITION

The use of uPVC casement windows, the addition of a large rendered extension, and modern internal finishes all detract from the building's character. The decorative eaves course to the front facade is obscured by modern electrical wiring. Numerous television aerials further detract from the setting of the square as a whole.