2 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co. Armagh, BT35 7AF

No. 2 Charlemont Square West is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian mid-terrace house, built in around 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of the western terrace of Charlemont Square, a formally planned square in the village of Bessbrook, County Armagh.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house has a rectangular plan form facing northeast. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried nearby on the former Charlemont Estate), with painted red brick dressings. Door and window openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though these heads are now generally squared off with painted smooth cement render. The roof is pitched and covered in fibre cement slates with angled black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section red brick chimney with two terracotta pots rises at the northwest. Eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are uPVC with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and flush with the main terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a panelled painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade. The door has three vertical panels below two glazed panels, brass furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. A window occupies the northwest side of the ground floor. The facade has a regular fenestration pattern, with two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings. All windows are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes.

The building is attached to No. 3 Charlemont Square West on the northwest and to No. 1 Charlemont Square West on the southeast.

To the rear (southwest elevation), where visible, there is a single-bay, two-storey pitched-roof rear return projecting to the rear boundary. A planked painted timber half-door leads from the rear access route to a flat-roofed extension abutting the northwest side of the rear return. This flat-roofed extension has a felt roof topped with painted metal railings. The rear elevation is generally finished in painted smooth cement render with uPVC rainwater goods and timber top-opening casement windows. A large two-storey rear return was added in around 1987. The current sliding sash window frames were installed in around 1997.

SETTING

No. 2 forms part of Charlemont Square West, one side of a planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops forming a formal square, with east, north, and west terraces arranged around a central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings, respecting the subtle relief of the site. Rear yards are generally enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. Front facades are nearly uniform along the east and west terraces, with five larger buildings at the southeast end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeast end of Charlemont Square West having traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level and dwellings above. The northern terrace consists of only eight houses in width, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central area of the square is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees at its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast, including a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

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 originally known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s recorded few buildings at Bessbrook at that time, with only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills depicted.

The village as it is known today 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 (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later described having "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town," and deliberately chose a rural site near Newry with water power, a local population, and flax cultivation nearby. 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. Development began with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s.

Richardson's philanthropic approach was rooted in what his biographer Harrison describes as "a typical Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic expectation to provide jobs and good working conditions for his employees." He brought the poor, unqualified, and destitute from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement. Bessbrook is famously known as a village without the "Three P's": Richardson stipulated there would be no Public House and no Pawn Shop, and consequently no need for Police. In place of a public house, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops along Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to mill workers. The strategy proved effective: the majority of the population voted to preserve the ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day Bessbrook has no public house. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after purchasing his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–1865), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson expanded his factory and workforce accordingly. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook by the mid-1860s.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers. Between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215 and the number of houses from 73 to 296. The square formed the centrepiece of these new developments, with two- and two-and-a-half-storey houses arranged along the north, west, and east sides of an open green intended as a recreational space (a tennis ground was depicted within the green on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906). The architect of the houses is not known with certainty, though the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook during the 1860s, possibly limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The Natural Stone Database records that the houses were built of Newry Granodiorite, quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This same granite was used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

Charlemont Square was not yet depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year noted that Charlemont Square West (recorded as "new row") was the only completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along its length remained unoccupied at that date. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and possessed between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs (which were not permitted in areas occupied by the family or in the yard, but could be kept in a pig-sty or fowl-run in the garden), and also placed under obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 2 Charlemont Square West was constructed in around 1862. The Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. James Ferguson and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed frequently over subsequent decades, though the value remained unaltered until the 1950s. The building was depicted on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of Bessbrook in 1906 in its current layout. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by John Burke, a damask mechanic employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, and was described as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The Burke family continued to reside at No. 2 until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War, mill workers were tasked with supplying cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when the dwellings began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970. The sale of these properties was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 2 Charlemont Square West was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was increased in value to £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–1972).

The building was listed in 1981 and 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 — 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), which in turn "directly influenced town and country planning all over the world." Bessbrook is considered internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s and predating those more widely celebrated English examples.

The listing covers the house, gate, and railings.