25 Charlemont Square West, Besssrook, Co.Armagh

25 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of the western terrace of Charlemont Square, a formally planned square of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green. The house has been in continuous residential use since its construction and retains its original Victorian external character, despite the replacement of the original windows, front railings and roof slates, and the addition of a large two-storey extension to the rear added around 1981.

Architectural Description

The building has a rectangular plan form facing northeast. The walls are built in generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate — with painted red brick dressings. Window cills are painted stone, and the square-headed door and window openings have painted stepped rustic brick surrounds. The pitched roof is clad in fibre cement tiles with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest, with a single black clay pot. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course, and rainwater goods consist of uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The principal (northeast-facing) elevation is near-symmetrical. A modest gravelled front yard is enclosed by a concrete dwarf wall, and a concrete path leads to a sheeted painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade. The door has a small single rectangular glazed light to its upper part and black iron furniture. There is a window opening to the northwest side of the ground floor, and two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings. Windows are top-opening timber casements.

The building is attached on the northwest to No. 26 Charlemont Square West and on the southeast to No. 24 Charlemont Square West.

The rear (southwest-facing) elevation includes a single-bay, two-storey pitched-roof rear return projecting into the rear yard at the southeast end. This return has a two-part side-opening casement window at first-floor level and a panelled uPVC door with a glazed top half at ground-floor level, both facing southwest. A single-storey monopitched extension abuts the rear return to the northwest, extending to the northwest yard boundary and to the southwestern extent of the return. This extension is a single reduced bay in width and has a two-part uPVC side-opening casement window at its southwest end. Above the monopitched block, the southwest facade of the main house has a single top-opening timber casement window. The rear elevations are generally finished in smooth cement render, with timber top- or side-opening casement windows and concrete cills. The rear return has fibre cement roof tiles, a painted timber fascia and soffit, and uPVC rainwater goods. A sheeted painted timber door set within a smooth cement-rendered boundary wall gives access from a concrete rear yard via a rear access route.

Historical and Social Context

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 as part of the broader development of Bessbrook as a planned model village — an enterprise begun in the 1840s by John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg. Richardson purchased a derelict mill at the site in 1845 and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. The village's origins are older: in 1761, a Mr John Pollock had opened the first woollen mill and bleach green at what was then known simply as "The Green", later renamed Bessbrook after his wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (the brook). By the 1830s, the First Edition Ordnance Survey map recorded only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills at the site, with very little housing.

Richardson's development of Bessbrook was shaped by his Quaker beliefs and by the influence of William Penn, the Quaker planner of Philadelphia. He conceived the village as a social experiment: his workers would live and work in good conditions, and he hoped this would foster good relations between employer and employee. He is recorded as having brought people from the surrounding countryside — including the poor, the unqualified and beggars — to live and work at Bessbrook, intending to encourage self-improvement. Bessbrook became famously known as a village without the "Three Ps": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore, it was argued, no need for police. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his workers. 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.

In 1863, Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company following the purchase of his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65) when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson took advantage of this by greatly enlarging his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson both the principal employer and the main landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out during this period of rapid growth: between 1861 and 1871, the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

The architect of the houses in Charlemont Square is not known with certainty. C. E. B. Brett has suggested that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used in the construction was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite was of high quality and was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool.

Charlemont Square West (described in Griffith's Valuation of 1862 as "new row") was the first side of the square to be completed, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied at that time. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866.

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 stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs (which were not permitted in the quarters occupied by the family or in the yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden), and were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

History of No. 25 Specifically

No. 25 Charlemont Square West was constructed around 1862. According to the Annual Revisions, it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Andrew Downey and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unchanged until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current layout. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by Elizabeth McCamley, a washerwoman whose family were employed as winders and card lacers at Richardson's factory; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The McKinley family took possession of No. 25 in 1941 and remained there until 1968.

During the 20th century, Bessbrook Mill continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international recognition. During the Second World War, the mill workers supplied cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the Charlemont Square houses until the 1960s, when they 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, around 1970. The sale of property was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which preceded the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 25 was purchased outright by Elizabeth Andrews in 1968, and was revalued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72). The building was listed in 1981. Around the same time, the two-storey rear extension was added, and the roof was reslated and new window frames installed as part of a renovation programme.

Setting and Group Value

No. 25 forms part of Charlemont Square West, one of three terraces — East, West, and North — arranged around a central green. The East and West terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. Front elevations along both terraces are nearly uniform, with five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West having traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The shorter northern terrace comprises only eight houses, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by a dwarf wall topped by hooped metal railings; the front of No. 25 is enclosed by concrete dwarf walling. Rear yards are generally larger, enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades throughout the square are much altered with various extensions of different shapes and sizes.

The central area of the square is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in Bessbrook in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

Bessbrook was designated a Conservation Area in 1983 in recognition of its 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 from 1895), which have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. The house and its terrace are considered to be of Northern Irish and international significance in this context.