9 Deramore (Derrymore) Terrace, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

9 Deramore (Derrymore) Terrace, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay late Victorian terraced house built in approximately 1892 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of a planned row of ten similar houses — also known as Richardson's Terrace — constructed as workers' housing for the nearby Bessbrook Mill. The listing covers the house itself together with its railings and gate.

Architectural Description

The house is of rectangular plan, facing southwest, with a later single-storey rear return. The principal walling material is locally quarried Newry Granodiorite, laid in generally random-coursed, rock-faced fashion. Window and door openings are square-headed with stepped red brick dressings to the jambs and gauged brick to the reveals. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. Eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. To the northwest, a rectangular-section red brick chimney (rebuilt in rustic brick) carries two buff clay pots; to the southeast, a similar chimney carries three buff clay pots and one terracotta pot. Rainwater goods to the front southwest elevation consist of uPVC half-round guttering discharging to a cast iron circular-section downpipe; fibre cement guttering on rise-and-fall brackets serves the rear elevation, with uPVC downpipes to the rear return.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace and is near-symmetrical. Fenestration is regularly arranged: two windows at first-floor level align with the openings below. All windows are double-hung, three-over-three sliding timber sash with horns. At ground-floor level there is one window to the northwest side of the entrance door. The doorway is fitted with a painted sheeted timber stable door with brass furniture and a square-headed fanlight with modern leaded glass above. Access to the front door is via a concrete path from the street gate. The modest front garden is gravelled and enclosed by a dwarf stone wall topped with vertical painted metal railings with pointed finials. The foot gate is hung on circular-section cast iron posts to the southeast.

Rear (Northeast) Elevation

The rear elevation retains original stone walling at first-floor level, with a top-opening uPVC casement window to the centre. A single-storey, monopitched extension projects to the northeast across the full width of the elevation, giving access to a shared rear route. The southwest portion of this rear return has a corrugated metal roof; the northeast portion is roofed in corrugated Perspex. The rear return is finished in pebbledash cement render and has a painted sheeted timber door to the southeast leading from the rear access route, a fixed-light window to the northwest side of that door, and a horizontal strip of fixed lights at ceiling height.

Attached Elevations

To the northwest the house is attached to No. 8 Deramore Terrace; to the southeast it is attached to No. 10 Deramore Terrace.

Setting

The terrace sits on the northeast side of Derrymore Road, a main approach route into Bessbrook village. Each house is set back from the footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf stone walling topped with metal railings. To the rear, yard boundary walls are of random-coursed rubble stone, each with a square-headed door opening onto a wide shared rear access route running northwest to southeast, accessible from both ends of the terrace. Rear facades and rear yard walls are now generally much altered. To the northeast of the shared access route each dwelling has a rear garden, many containing later outbuildings; No. 9 has an outbuilding and a lawn to the rear. The terrace overlooks parkland associated with Derrymore House to the southwest, where stone walling runs along the roadside amid mature trees.

Historical Context

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a Mr John Pollock. The site was then known simply as "The Green" and was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s shows very few buildings at Bessbrook at that time, the principal structures being Mount Caulfield House (the residence of the Nicholson family) 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 on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, in his own words, "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 planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson's philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement. The village was established as a social experiment notable for the absence of what became known as the "Three Ps": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for a police presence. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, 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 is no public house in 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. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly expanded both his factory and workforce. When Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, Richardson became the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of workers; between 1861 and 1871 the population rose from 637 to 2,215 and the number of houses from 73 to 296. By the turn of the 20th century the population stood at approximately 4,000.

Deramore Terrace is contemporary with other workers' terraces in Bessbrook such as Maytown Terrace, though it was laid out approximately half a mile to the southeast of Richardson's mill and the majority of the village's other housing, on a plot of land near Woodhouse, Derry House and the Friends' Meeting House. The Annual Revisions record that Nos 1–10 Deramore Terrace were constructed in 1892 and leased to tenants by the Richardson estate. The First Survey of 1969 suggests the terrace was built specifically for elderly residents, though the Census of Ireland at the turn of the 20th century recorded that the majority of early tenants were under 50 years of age or remained employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The architect of the terrace is unknown. Most housing in Bessbrook was built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The stone used throughout the village is Newry Granodiorite, quarried on the former Charlemont Estate. Bessbrook granite is of high quality and was used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool.

No. 9 specifically was valued at £4 by the Annual Revisions and was initially leased by Richardson to a Mrs Adamson. In 1900 ownership of the terrace passed from the Richardson estate to the Trustees of the neighbouring Friends' Meeting House, with William Davies — a local magistrate and Richardson's land agent — acting as secretary. The terrace was renamed Richardson's Terrace in 1901. That year the Census of Ireland recorded No. 9 as occupied by John Moses (aged 30), a mechanic employed at Richardson's mill. The census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms with a shed as its sole outbuilding. The building appears in its current form on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906.

During the 20th century Bessbrook Mill continued to expand and gained international recognition; during the Second World War its workers supplied cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when most dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms as a post-war downturn in the textile market preceded the mill's closure in 1972. Ownership of Deramore Terrace had reverted to the Bessbrook Spinning Company by the time of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72), but No. 9 was purchased outright by a Mr Robert Ferris in approximately 1969, at which point the total rateable value of the house stood at £7 and 10 shillings. No. 9 Deramore Terrace was listed in 1985 and was in use as a private dwelling at the time of the second survey.

Significance

The house retains its external character and original front boundaries, and is of good quality with well-proportioned elevations and good detailing. Its significance is somewhat diminished by the flat-roofed extension and covered yard to the rear and by modern internal finishes. As one of ten similar houses in the row, it has group value with its neighbours. The terrace is also of broader historical and social importance as part of an early planned mill village begun in the 1840s, contemporary with the English model villages of Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville (1895), which subsequently contributed to town and country planning practice worldwide.