6 Fountain St., Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 6 Fountain Street is a modest two-storey semi-detached former schoolmaster's dwelling built between 1861 and 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It is attached to No. 5 Fountain Street, and together the pair form a symmetrical rectangular plan facing north-east onto College Square. The building is rendered in painted lined cement render to the front elevation and painted smooth render elsewhere, with a pitched roof now covered in fibre-cement slates and angled black clay ridge tiles.

The front elevation is the principal face of the building. The two houses share a central bay incorporating a half-dormer at first floor above a shared ground-floor window, each fitted with a pair of top-opening uPVC casement windows divided by a wide mullion — the mullion marking the boundary between the two properties. To the north-west of this shared window, No. 6 has its own entrance door, approached by two granite steps and fitted with a uPVC door with a square-headed fanlight above. To either side of the central shared bay, narrowly projecting gabled blocks flank the facade, each carrying a decorative timber bargeboard to the gable and uPVC casement windows at both ground and first floor. The eaves project with decorative moulded timber corbels. Window cills throughout are of granite stone. Rainwater goods are metal half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The north-west elevation faces a garden enclosed by modern fenestrated block walling to the south-east and north-east, the side wall of the former school building to the north-west, and a row of monopitched outbuildings to the south-west. This elevation has a rectangular section rendered chimney stack to the centre of the exterior wall, a single terracotta clay pot, and two equally spaced top-opening uPVC casement windows at ground floor. A modest monopitched boiler house is attached to the south-west.

The south-west rear elevation faces directly onto Thomas Street and is symmetrical with the rear elevation of No. 5. It consists of a two-storey gabled block to the north-west and a flush two-storey monopitched extension added around 1980 to the south-east. The gabled block has a top-opening uPVC casement window with a painted stone cill at first floor. The monopitched block has a three-part uPVC casement window at ground floor with a slim painted concrete cill, a matching window directly above at first floor, and a uPVC door to the north-west. The walling here is painted smooth cement render with flush eaves. A two-storey flush monopitched extension, added around 1980, bridges the two gabled blocks at the rear. The south-east elevation is the party wall, attached to No. 5 Fountain Street.

The gardens to the front and side of each house are set to lawn with some mature shrubs. The main shared approach is a paved path running north-west from a foot gate on Fountain Street, with a painted metal scrollwork gate hung on decorative concrete pillars and hooped metal railings to the north-east side. Each garden is generally enclosed by modern fenestrated block walling, though the garden of No. 5 is bounded along Fountain Street by random-coursed rock-faced stone walling with decorative coping of alternating squared and angled blocks. The garden of No. 6 is enclosed to the north-west by the side wall of the former school building. Separate painted metal foot gates hung on square-section rendered pillars to the north-east of each garden open onto individual concrete paths leading to the separate entrance doors. Painted smooth cement render garden walling extends to the north-west at the rear, with monopitched outbuildings within the garden enclosure.

The building faces directly onto a garden area belonging to the former school, planted with mature shrubs and trees and enclosed by galvanised hooped metal railings. The Institute building sits on the opposite side of College Square. The decorative bargeboards mirror those of the adjacent former schoolhouse, and the pair of dwellings, together with that schoolhouse and the surrounding mill workers' terraces, give this building substantial group value within the setting of College Square.

The dwelling is located within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, at the south-east end of College Square — a formally designed late-Victorian square consisting of 53 historic millworkers' dwellings arranged on three sides around a central bowling green and playground, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the south-east. The use of uPVC windows and fibre-cement roof slates does detract from the building's character, though its well-designed proportions and modest ornamental detailing remain clearly legible.

Historically, No. 6 Fountain Street is of considerable local importance as part of the early planned mill village of Bessbrook. The village's origins lie in 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green at the site, then known simply as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, when the first Ordnance Survey map was made, few buildings had been erected; the principal structures shown were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later described his motivation: he 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." His layout of Bessbrook 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 spirit led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement. He provided good standards of living — including recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and the distribution of milk, tea, and cocoa to his workers — in exchange for keeping the village free of alcohol. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's": no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house in Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

Development proceeded in phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. 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, prompting Richardson to greatly enlarge his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold him the remainder of the Camlough Estate in 1865, making Richardson both the principal employer and the main landowner. Between 1862 and 1866 Charlemont Square was laid out to accommodate new workers, and between 1861 and 1871 the village's population rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses increasing from 73 to 296.

The schoolhouse at College Square West had originally been constructed in 1853, predating most of the surviving village housing, but was considerably enlarged in 1875 to meet the demands of the growing population. Nos. 5 and 6 Fountain Street were built alongside it in 1861–62 as residences for the local schoolmasters. The dwellings did not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 but were recorded in Griffith's Valuation of 1862, at which time No. 6 was valued at £7 and leased from the Richardson estate to William Briars, a schoolteacher. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, and by the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by national schoolteacher Thomas Simpson. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded No. 6 as a second-class dwelling of seven rooms with no outbuildings. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 showed both houses in their current configuration, each with a small shed to the rear — the central rear extension block not having been added until around 1980.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value of No. 6 was increased to £12 and 10 shillings, at which time the building was leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to James Darragh. The Spinning Company retained ownership of most buildings in the village until the 1960s, when a post-war downturn in the textile market began to force the sale of property to private individuals and firms. This decline foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 6 continued to be leased to tenants by the Spinning Company until the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), when it was occupied by a Mr William Black and valued at £15 and 10 shillings. The two-storey rear extension was added to both Nos. 5 and 6 around 1980. The building was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983, which recognises Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village with a distinct form and character. 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 in 1895), villages which have directly influenced town and country planning around the world.