23 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co Armagh

23 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay late-Victorian end-of-terrace house, built around 1883. 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 forms the northernmost end of a row of twenty-three similar dwellings that, together with Bessbrook Town Hall to the southeast, make up the eastern side of College Square — a formally planned late-Victorian square of fifty-three mill workers' dwellings in total, arranged on three sides around a central bowling green and playground, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast.

Architectural Description

The house is L-shaped in plan, facing southwest. The walls are built of random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a fine-quality local granite), with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, painted stone sills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings to both doors and windows. The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. The chimney stack to the northwest has been rebuilt in rustic red brick and carries two terracotta clay pots. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is nearly symmetrical and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by a replacement dwarf rustic red brick wall, with a painted metal scrollwork foot gate hung on slim posts at the southeast end. A concrete path leads from the gate to a panelled painted timber door at the southeast end of the façade. The door has a single segmental arched glazed panel to its upper half and a square-headed fanlight above. There is one window to the northwest side at ground floor level. The fenestration is regular, with two windows at first floor level aligned directly above the ground floor openings. All windows are top-opening timber casements.

Northwest Elevation

The northwest side elevation has a roughcast cement render finish, a chimney at the roof apex, and a painted timber bargeboard. There are top-opening timber casement windows at both ground and first floor levels, plus a single window at ground floor level in the rear return.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

Access to the rear northeast elevation is limited. Where visible, the walling is random-coursed rock-faced stone, forming the boundary of the rear yard, which is reached through a painted timber door from the rear access route. From the northwest end of the façade, a two-storey pitched-roof rear return projects northeast into the rear yard. Abutting this return on its southeast side is a single-storey, monopitched-roof covered area. At the southeast extent of the rear yard — reduced to a single bay in width — there is one window visible at first floor level facing northeast. The rear return has a three-part casement window in its northeast gable. There is a flat-roofed outbuilding at the northern corner of the rear yard. The rear elevation is generally finished in roughcast cement render with slim concrete sills and timber casement windows.

Southeast

At the southeast, the building is attached to No. 22 College Square East.

Alterations

The building retains its overall character despite a number of alterations: the original natural slate roof has been replaced with fibre cement tiles; the original front door, windows and front railings have all been replaced; and a large two-storey extension was added to the rear in approximately 2003.

Setting

No. 23 forms part of College Square East, which is itself part of a planned arrangement of fifty-three mill workers' dwellings. The square's eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings, reflecting the subtle relief of the site. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath with a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access lane; rear façades are generally much altered. The front façades of the eastern terrace are nearly uniform, with the village Town Hall (the former Institute building) located to the southeast. The northern terrace is the shortest at twelve houses wide and, though similar in style, is distinctly larger, being two-and-a-half storeys.

The central area of the square is now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. The northwest section contains a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with some established trees at its northwest boundary. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings occupies the southeast section. The centre of the square contains an open children's playground, which includes 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, recently moved to its current location from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

Historical Context

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761, when a Mr John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on a 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, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected: the only significant structures shown were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village of Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. 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.' Bessbrook was laid out as a model village in several phases, beginning with Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson's approach to planning 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, described as possessing a typical Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic expectation, aimed to provide good working conditions and high living standards for his employees as a means of ensuring harmonious relations between employer and workforce. He brought the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement.

Bessbrook is traditionally known as a village without the 'Three Ps': Richardson stipulated there would be no public house and no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police. In place of alcohol, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Charlemont Square, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement 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 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 took the opportunity to greatly enlarge his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. To house the influx of new workers, Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866; the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 in 1861 to 2,215 in 1871, with the number of houses increasing from 73 to 296.

College Square was laid out in approximately 1883 in response to a further expansion of Richardson's business. The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide describes the mid-1880s as 'a period of intense building activity in the village' during which 'the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established with the building of College Square.' Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The square was named after the Primary School on its west side, erected in 1849. The two-storey dwellings were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, using Newry Granodiorite from a quarry on the former Charlemont Estate — the same high-quality granite used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The terraces were first recorded by the Annual Revisions in 1883. The bowling green at the southern end of the square was added in 1911.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing several stipulations: regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs (permitted in a garden pig-sty or fowl-run, but not in the family's quarters or yard), and requiring tenants to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 23 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms Hannah Seaver, valued at £5 and 10 shillings — a valuation that remained unchanged until the 1950s. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the house as occupied by James Bradley, a local farmer whose family worked at Richardson's factory; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. By the 1940s the house was occupied by a Mr Hugh McConnell. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the College Square dwellings until the 1960s, when they began to be sold to private individuals; the majority were purchased by a Mr George Preston in approximately 1969. The sale of property at Bessbrook was made necessary by the post-war decline in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 23 College Square East was purchased outright by George Preston in 1969. At the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the house's rateable value had been increased to £8, and it continued to be occupied by the McConnell family.

The house was listed in 1981 and was included within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village. Bessbrook is internationally recognised as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with — and considered an influence upon — the famous English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), all of which have directly influenced town and country planning around the world.