21 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

21 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay, mid-terrace house built around 1883, forming part of College Square East — a formally planned late-Victorian square of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged around a central green. The architect is unknown, though the work may be attributable 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 is of L-plan form, facing southwest, with a two-storey and single-storey rear return to the northeast. The external walls are built in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate), with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings. The roof is pitched and covered in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original natural slates. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest has a segmented half-round coping and a single terracotta clay pot. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC: half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes at the front southwest elevation, and box guttering with square-section downpipes to the rear return.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and flush with the rest of the terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by a dwarf modern block wall with decorative pierced blocks, and a painted metal scrollwork foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a four-panelled painted timber front door at the southeast end of the facade. The door has brass furniture, a segmental arched glazed section with radial glazing bars at the top, and a square-headed fanlight above. The facade has a regular fenestration pattern, with two windows at first-floor level positioned in line with the ground-floor openings; all windows are top-opening timber casements.

Northwest Elevation

The building is attached to No. 22 College Square East on this side.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

Access to the rear is limited. Where visible, the rear consists of a two-storey flat-roofed return with a felt-covered roof, and a single-storey block attached to its northeast side forming the boundary of the rear yard. The rear yard is a single, reduced bay in width at its northwest extent, with a single top-opening casement window visible at first-floor level. The two-storey rear return has a single timber casement window visible to its northeast gable. Walling to the rear and return is generally rough-cast cement render, with top-opening timber casement windows and slim concrete cills. A flat-roofed outbuilding occupies the northern corner of the yard, and a painted planked timber door opens from the rear access route into the rear yard.

Southeast Elevation

The building is attached to No. 20 College Square East on this side. There is also a single casement window to the northwest side of the building.

Condition and Alterations

The building retains its overall character, though it has undergone a number of alterations: the original natural slate roof has been replaced with fibre cement tiles, the original front door and windows have been replaced, the original front railings have been removed, and a large flat-roofed extension has been added to the rear.

Setting

No. 21 forms part of the eastern terrace of College Square, one of 23 similar houses in that terrace (together with the Bessbrook Town Hall — the old Institute building — to the southeast). The full square comprises 53 dwellings in total, arranged along its east, north, and west sides around a central area now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and green, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at the northwest boundary, the bowling green having been added in 1911. To the southeast is a lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings, and at the centre of the square is an open children's playground containing three granite monuments. One monument 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 this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently moved from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill to its current location, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Ltd in 1878.

Each house along the square is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to respect the subtle relief of the site. The rear yard of each dwelling is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades are generally much altered; front facades are nearly uniform along the eastern terrace. The northern terrace, comprising twelve houses, consists of distinctly larger two-and-a-half storey buildings. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style.

Historical Context

The history of Bessbrook begins in 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known simply as "The Green," later renamed Bessbrook after his wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, the first edition Ordnance Survey map recorded very few buildings at the site — principally Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

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, purchased one of the derelict mills and began constructing housing for his factory workers. Richardson's 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. He established Bessbrook as a social experiment and model village, providing good living conditions in the hope of fostering positive relations between employer and workforce. His philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor and unqualified from the surrounding countryside, hoping to encourage self-improvement. The village became famous as a settlement without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for police — with Richardson instead providing recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea, and cocoa to his workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement 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 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 responded by enlarging his factory and workforce considerably. Lord Charlemont sold him the remainder of the Camlough Estate in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the population grew 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 this influx, and College Square followed around 1883 as Richardson's business continued to expand. The factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. College Square takes its name from the Primary School on its west side, erected in 1849. The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide described 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."

The terraces of College Square were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used throughout is of notably high quality — the same stone was used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool, and was produced at a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. Each house was owned by the 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 (confined to a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden, not in the family quarters or yard), and were bound by a clause obliging them to send their children to school until old enough for mill work.

Annual Revisions record that No. 21 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Samuel McComb, valued at £5 and 10 shillings — a valuation that remained unchanged until the 1950s. The occupants changed frequently over subsequent decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the house as occupied by Adam Meeke, a local joiner, and described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. The Meeke family remained in residence through the mid-20th century. During the Second World War the mill workers were tasked with producing cloth for military uniforms.

From the 1960s onwards, the Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling off its housing, driven by the post-war downturn in the local textile market that ultimately led to the closure of the mill in 1972 (the mill building was subsequently occupied by the British Army). The majority of the houses along College Square were purchased by a Mr. George Preston around 1969; the Meeke family were still resident at No. 21 at that time, when Preston acquired the property. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the house had been revalued at £8.

No. 21 College Square East was listed in 1981. Bessbrook is internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages in these islands, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with, or predating, the celebrated English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895) — all of which have been credited with directly influencing town and country planning around the world.