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

No. 1 Charlemont Square West is a substantial two-and-a-half-storey, three-bay mid-Victorian end-terrace corner house and shop, built around 1862 by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to designs by an unknown architect. The listing extends to the house itself, the boundary walling, gate, piers and railings.

Origins and Historical Significance

The building forms part of Charlemont Square, a formally planned mid-Victorian square of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops arranged along the north, west and eastern sides of a central green. It is the largest of the twenty-six houses forming the western terrace of the square, occupying a prominent corner position at the southern end of that terrace.

The village of Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased a derelict mill near Newry and began constructing housing for his factory workers. Richardson — influenced by the Quaker urban planning principles of William Penn, who had laid out Philadelphia in the late 17th century — established Bessbrook as a model village, providing workers with good living conditions, recreational and educational facilities, and a settlement deliberately free of public houses, pawn shops and, for much of its early history, police. The majority of the population voted to preserve this ordinance in the 1870s, and no public house exists in Bessbrook to this day.

Richardson had Charlemont Square laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house an influx of workers during a period of rapid expansion. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off, and between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses rising from 73 to 296. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson both principal landowner and main employer in the village.

The architect of the square's terraces is not known with certainty. The engineer John Hardy was appointed company architect in 1881 and may have undertaken some earlier work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been confined to the mill buildings themselves. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The houses were constructed in Newry Granodiorite, quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate — a high-quality granite also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool.

Griffith's Valuation of 1862 records Charlemont Square West (then described as "new row") as the only completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied at the time. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866. Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required by their lease to keep fowl and pigs out of the family quarters and yard (a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden), and to send their children to school until they were old enough to work at the mill.

No. 1 Charlemont Square West was initially let to a Mr Mortimer Glynn. From 1868 until 1908 it was occupied by the Pearson family, who operated a drapers' shop from the premises. Thomas Herbert Pearson, noted in the 1901 Census and Ulster Town Directories, was a prominent local figure who served as secretary of both the Camlough Water Works and the Institute on College Square. In 1914 John Ferguson, an assistant manager at Richardson's factory, took over the building and established a stationer's and newsagent's at the corner site, a use that has continued ever since. The 1911 census building return classified No. 1 as a first-class building with eight inhabited rooms. The Ferguson family retained possession until at least the 1970s. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the combined dwelling and shop was valued at £22 and 10 shillings.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when the dwellings 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 post-war downturn in the local textile market led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 1 Charlemont Square West was purchased outright by John L. Ferguson in 1970 and was revalued at £31 under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

The building was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village. 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 from 1895), which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world.

Exterior Description

The building is constructed in generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite walling with red brick dressings. Door and window openings have stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds with brick keystone detailing and chamfered jambs to gauged-brick cambered heads. The roof is pitched fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles; rendered chimneys of rectangular section to the south-west and north-east each carry a single buff clay pot, reconstructed around 1986–88. Projecting eaves have painted timber fascia and soffit, with metal ogee guttering discharging to uPVC circular-section downpipes.

An irregular-plan two-storey, three-bay block is attached to the north-west side of the main building. This attached block faces north-east onto Charlemont Square West and has a one-and-two-storey rear return to the south-west, enclosed by boundary walling to the former rear yard. The north-west block has similar window openings to the main block but without keystones and with squared jambs. Its roof is pitched fibre cement with a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the north-east carrying a single terracotta clay pot, and flush eaves with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods to this block are cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes on the north-east elevation.

Principal (South-East) Elevation

The front elevation faces south-east onto Church Road and is symmetrical. A modest gravelled front yard is enclosed by random-coursed rock-faced dwarf stone walling topped by horizontal flat-bar railings set between decorative square-section cast iron posts with pine cone finials. A decorative cast iron foot gate, hung on octagonal-section cast iron pillars with ball finials, is positioned at the centre of the elevation. A concrete path from the gate leads to a single wide stone doorstep and a six-panelled uPVC door, with a square-headed fanlight above. Dressed stone quoins finish the façade edges. The fenestration is regularly arranged, with three windows at first-floor level aligned with the main entrance door and flanking windows at ground-floor level. Windows are generally double-hung sliding timber sash with horizontal glazing bars, window horns and concealed sash boxes. The attached north-west block has similar windows but with exposed sash boxes.

South-West Elevation

This elevation presents a two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay block to the south-east, adjacent to the entrance of the rear access route for Charlemont Square West. The attached north-west block is set back from the rear access route; random-coursed rock-faced stone walling to the rear access boundary is topped by hooped painted metal railings. The two-and-a-half-storey block retains its original stone walling with no openings at ground-floor level and two windows at first-floor level: one a replacement uPVC top-opening casement and one a double-hung sliding timber sash with horizontal glazing bars. The north-west block has a two-storey single-bay pitched-roof rear return in English Garden Wall Bond red brick projecting from its rear south-west-facing elevation. This rear return has a single top-opening uPVC casement window at first-floor level facing south-west, and is abutted to the south-west and south-east by a single-storey flat-roofed block extending to the south-west boundary walling of the former rear yard. The north-west block has a uPVC door at first-floor level — with glazed upper half — facing south-west, opening onto the flat-roofed block on the south-east side of the rear return. The flat-roofed block also abuts the north-west wall of the main two-and-a-half-storey block to the south-east. A plate metal door in the angled section of the rear yard boundary walling, at its southern edge, leads to the flat-roofed extension. The south-west elevation generally has uPVC rainwater goods, painted timber fascia and uPVC top-opening casement windows unless otherwise stated.

North-East Elevation

This elevation faces onto Charlemont Square West. The two-and-a-half-storey gabled block at the south-eastern end is two bays wide, with a chimney to the gable. At first-floor level are two replacement uPVC windows with painted red brick surrounds. At ground-floor level is an arcaded and glazed painted timber double shopfront with modern signage, enlarged around 1988. A central door with glazed upper half and a semi-circular fanlight above is flanked on both sides by a pair of semi-circular arched fixed lights set on stone dwarf walling. The main block is abutted to the north-west by the three-bay terraced block of similar design, though larger in scale, than the remainder of the dwellings along Charlemont Square West. This three-bay block retains its original stone walling with red brick dressings, sash windows with horizontal glazing bars (the ground-floor windows have frosted glazing), and a doorway to the centre bay that is now blocked with stone. The two blocks are divided by stepped red brick quoins, and both have a modest paved front yard enclosed by painted hooped metal railings.

Alterations

The building underwent extensive renovation between approximately 1986 and 1988. This work included replacement of the original glazing with sliding sash window frames, reconfiguration of the chimney stacks, and replacement of some internal joinery and roof slates. Contemporary plans indicate that the building originally had a smaller shopfront; this was replaced with the current double shopfront around 1988, at which time a ground-floor wall was also demolished, reorganising the interior floorplan and enlarging the shop. A second entrance door which appears to have once existed at ground-floor level in the two-storey block on Charlemont Square West had already been blocked with stone before the 1980s.

Setting

No. 1 Charlemont Square West occupies a prominent corner position at the southern end of the western terrace of the square. The square is a planned arrangement of 66 dwellings and shops forming a formal composition, with east, north and west terraces arranged around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the south-east. 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. Rear yards are generally enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with square-headed door openings onto a wide rear access route; rear façades are much altered with extensions of various shapes and sizes. Front façades are nearly uniform along the east and west terraces, with five larger buildings to the south-east of Charlemont Square East and No. 1 Charlemont Square West having traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses in width, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central area of the square 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 south-east, including a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the south-east of the playground.