1 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 1 Wakefield Terrace is a two-storey, three-bay end-of-terrace house finished in painted lined cement render. It was originally built around 1865 as a single-storey dwelling to designs by an unknown architect, then substantially rebuilt, raised by a storey, and upgraded around 1926, giving it its present appearance. The listing covers the house and its yard walling.

The house sits on a corner plot at the south-west end of Fountain Street and the south-east end of Charlemont Square in Bessbrook, County Armagh, where it forms the first of a terrace of six similar houses. It has an L-plan form, facing north-east towards Fountain Street, with a two-storey pitched-roof rear return. It also has significant group value alongside the neighbouring terraces on Charlemont Square and Lakeview.

EXTERIOR

The walls are finished throughout in painted lined cement render with square-headed door and window openings and painted stone sills. The roof is covered in natural slate with roll-top terracotta clay ridge tiles. The eaves are flush, with uPVC fascia boards. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to square-section downpipes. There are two rebuilt rectangular-section red brick chimneys: the north-west chimney has one buff clay pot and one terracotta clay pot; the south-east chimney has two terracotta clay pots.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is asymmetric, fronted directly by the public footpath. It is arranged as a two-storey, three-bay composition. The central entrance door is flanked by sash windows. The door surround is painted and square-headed, with plain rectangular-section pilasters and a moulded entablature. The door itself is a six-panelled painted timber door with brass furniture and a square-headed fanlight above. The first-floor windows are positioned directly above the ground-floor openings. The window above the door is notably smaller than its neighbours, and all three first-floor windows are set within gabled dormers and are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with horns. Raised render quoins are present at the south-east corner.

The south-east side elevation consists of a two-storey gabled block to the north-east — which has a projecting plinth and no openings — and the two-storey rear return to the south-west. The north-east block has a red brick chimney at its apex. The rear return has two equally spaced double-hung sliding timber sash windows at ground-floor level, with two uPVC top-opening casement windows directly above at first-floor level, set within gabled dormers. The rear yard to the south-west is enclosed by smooth rendered dwarf walling topped with sheeted timber fencing, with a two-part sheeted timber gate leading to a shared rear yard.

The rear elevation faces south-west towards the shared rear yard (to which there is no access from this point). It has a two-storey rear return at the south-east and a private yard to the north-west, enclosed by flush painted lined render walling with a sheeted timber door at the south-east of the wall connecting the shared yard to the private yard.

To the north-west, the building is attached to No. 2 Wakefield Terrace.

SETTING

The terrace of six dwellings occupies a gently sloping site at the south-east end of Charlemont Square. Nos. 1 to 5 face north-east towards Fountain Street, fronted by the public footpath; No. 6 faces north-west onto Church Road and is set narrowly back from the footpath. Rear yards are open to neighbouring dwellings and are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling to the south-west. A section of original yard walling facing south-east is rendered, with a tall pier with a concrete capping adjacent to No. 1.

The village fountain, from which Fountain Street takes its name, stands to the north-east of the house. It is square in plan, built in granite ashlar, with cast iron water spouts to each side and a finial at the top. It is set within a rectangular enclosure formed by dwarf granite walling topped with painted metal railings, and the original stone trough remains in place.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Bessbrook was effectively founded as a planned model village in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends, purchased a derelict mill at the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. The history of industry in the area predates this, however: the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened in 1761 by a Mr. John Pollock, and the settlement was named Bessbrook after his wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, only a small number of buildings had been erected, the most significant being Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

Richardson's plan for 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 own motivation was explicitly stated: he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose Bessbrook for its water power, its rural character, and the availability of locally grown flax. He intended the village as a social experiment, aiming to provide good living standards for his workers in the belief that this would foster good relations between employer and employee. Harrison records that Richardson's philanthropic outlook led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook in hopes they would improve themselves.

Bessbrook is widely known as a village without the "Three P's": by Richardson's stipulation there was no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for police. In place of these, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and the distribution of milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers. The arrangement proved broadly acceptable to the population, who voted to preserve the ordinance in the 1870s; to this day there is no public house at Bessbrook, and police were not stationed there until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became the 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) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged both the factory and the workforce. In 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the influx of new workers, and the row that would become Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace — then known as Fountain Place — was built during the same period. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses 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 a lease agreement with specific stipulations: pigs and fowl could be kept in a sty or run in the garden but not in the yard or family quarters, and tenants were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 1 Wakefield Terrace was originally built around 1865 as a single-storey structure. It does not appear in Griffith's Valuation of 1862 but was first recorded in 1866 in the Annual Revisions. It was initially valued at £3 and 5 shillings and occupied by a Mr. Samuel Greer. Early 20th-century photographs show it as a single-storey cottage, while the adjoining Nos. 2–5 already formed a two-storey terrace. The 1911 Census described it as a second-class dwelling of four rooms, and the 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan shows it as a simple terraced structure with no outbuildings.

By 1926 the Annual Revisions valuer noted that the houses along Fountain Place were being rebuilt. Whether this constituted complete reconstruction or substantial refurbishment is not known with certainty, but it is clear that No. 1 was raised by a storey and extended to the rear, becoming an L-shaped building, as recorded on the Annual Revisions Town Plan of around 1909–35. The row was renamed Wakefield Terrace, and following the rebuilding No. 1 was revalued at £10 and 10 shillings. The newly rebuilt house was initially leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Robert George McKee, who remained there until around 1936.

The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) raised the value of No. 1 to £18 and 10 shillings and recorded a number of different occupants during the period. During the Second World War the house was briefly used as meeting rooms for the Bessbrook Air Raid Precaution Committee. The Bessbrook Spinning Company continued to own housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the post-war downturn in the textile market prompted the sale of many village properties to private individuals and firms; this decline ultimately led to the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 1 Wakefield Terrace was purchased outright by a Mr. Anthony McKay around 1970; by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) its total rateable value stood at £23.

The house was listed in 1981 and is 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. The Conservation Area Guide notes that the carefully planned development of Bessbrook influenced the design of the well-known 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." Around 1999, the house underwent a renovation that included the installation of new sliding sash window frames throughout.