7 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

7 College Square East, Bessbrook

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-terrace house built around 1883, forming part of College Square East in the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The architect is unknown, though the work may be attributed to John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881. The house is listed at Grade B2 and sits within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983.

Architectural Description

The house has a rectangular plan facing southwest, with a single-storey rear return. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate and also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall, Liverpool), with stepped red brick dressings to the jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. The pitched roof is now covered in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original slates. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest has a half-round coping and carries one black and one terracotta clay pot. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Rainwater goods are now uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, replacing the original fittings.

The principal southwest-facing elevation is near-symmetrical and flush with the rest of the terrace. A modest front yard, set to lawn, is enclosed by painted timber fencing (original hooped metal railings over a dwarf wall have been removed). A concrete path at the southeast end of the elevation leads to a four-panelled painted timber door; above the door is a semi-circular glazed section with radial glazing bars, black iron door furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. A window sits at the northwest end of the ground floor. The fenestration follows a regular pattern, with two windows at first-floor level aligned with the entrance door and ground-floor window. Windows are generally one-over-one double-hung sliding timber sash with window horns.

To the northwest the house is attached to No. 8 College Square East, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 6. Access to the rear northeast elevation is limited, but where visible it consists of a single-storey flat-roofed rear return, with one timber sash window visible at first-floor level. A random-coursed rock-faced yard boundary wall has a painted planked timber door leading from the rear access route into the rear yard.

Despite the replacement of original roof slates, rainwater goods and front railings, the building retains its external character.

Setting and Group

No. 7 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 make up the eastern side of the square. College Square as a whole comprises fifty-three mill workers' dwellings arranged along its north, west and eastern sides around a central area, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by a dwarf wall topped with hooped metal railings. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to respect the subtle 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 while similar in character, these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey buildings.

The central area of the square is now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. The northwest section has a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with some established trees at its northwest boundary, the bowling green having been added in 1911. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings lies to the southeast. In the centre is an open children's playground containing three granite monuments. One 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 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 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878. Rear yard boundary walls are of random-coursed rubble stone with square-headed openings onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades are generally much altered, while front facades are nearly uniform along the eastern terrace.

Historical Context

The origins of Bessbrook date to 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; the only significant structures depicted 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 at the site and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later wrote that 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 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 established Bessbrook as a social experiment — a model village where workers could live and work in contentment — and his philanthropic approach brought the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live there, with the intention that they might improve themselves and leave behind old habits.

Bessbrook is commonly described as a village without the "Three P's": Richardson stipulated that there would be no "Public House" or "Pawn Shop" in the settlement, and therefore no need for "Police" to be stationed there. In their place he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute building, a number of well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The strategy proved effective: the majority of the population voted to preserve the ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day there remains 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 following the purchase of his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65) when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and increased his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson both the principal employer and the principal landowner. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook 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 the influx of new workers. College Square was subsequently laid out around 1883 as Richardson's business continued to expand and his local workforce grew. The factory itself was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The 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, with College Square first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883.

No. 7 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Andrew Russell and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings, at which value it remained until the 1950s. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the house as occupied by a Ms Bella Galbraith, a linen weaver at the local factory, and described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the building remained valued at £5 and 10 shillings and had been let to a Mr William Burke.

Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs, specifying that they should not be found in the quarters occupied by the family or in the yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden. Tenants were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

During the Second World War the mill workers were tasked with supplying cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the College Square housing until the 1960s, when the post-war downturn in the local textile market prompted the sale of the dwellings, most of which were purchased by a Mr George Preston around 1969. No. 7 was purchased outright by George Preston in 1969, though the Burke family remained at the address by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), by which time the valuation had risen to £8. The mill ultimately closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. No. 7 College Square East was listed in 1981.

Bessbrook is internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with — and considered to have influenced — the later English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family in 1895, all of which have directly influenced town and country planning throughout the world. A formally designed Victorian square of this kind is itself a rare occurrence in the province.