24 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 24 Charlemont Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The house is listed for its architectural and historical interest, and falls within the Bessbrook Conservation Area designated in 1983.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building follows an L-plan form facing southwest, with a large two-storey rear return added around 1988. The principal walling material is random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate, the same stone used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Window and door openings have painted smooth render dressings with painted stone cills and stepped smooth render surrounds to the square-headed openings. The roof is pitched fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles and flush eaves finished with a red brick corbel course. A rectangular-section red brick chimney rises from the northwest. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The front elevation faces southwest and is near-symmetrical, sitting flush with the main terrace line. It is set back slightly from the larger shop buildings at the southeastern end of the terrace. A modest gravelled front yard is enclosed by painted block dwarf walling topped by replacement painted metal scroll railings, with a matching foot gate hung on square-section metal posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a planked painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade; the door has a rectangular glazed upper section and a rectangular fanlight above. A window sits to the northwest side at ground floor level. The first floor has two windows in line with the ground floor openings, all with top-opening timber casement windows, giving the facade a regular fenestration pattern.

To the northwest the building is attached to No. 25 Charlemont Square East, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 23 Charlemont Square East.

The rear elevation faces northeast and has a single-bay, two-storey pitched-roof rear return projecting to the rear boundary at the southeast. A planked painted timber door opens from the rear access route into a narrow L-shaped yard; a reduced single bay in width at the northwest leads to a panelled and glazed uPVC back door on the northwest side of the rear return. The rear elevation is finished in smooth cement render with uPVC top- or side-opening casement windows.

The building retains its external character and proportions, though the original windows, roof slates, and internal fittings have been replaced.

SETTING

No. 24 forms part of Charlemont Square East, one arm of a formally planned square comprising 66 buildings in total — 27 similar two-storey terraced houses and five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings to the southeast — arranged along east, north, and west terraces around a central green. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are arranged in groups of two dwellings stepped subtly to follow the slight relief of the site. To the rear, each dwelling has a larger yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades across the square are much altered, with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes.

The five larger buildings at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square East (with traditional shopfronts at ground floor level and dwellings above) and one equivalent building at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square West give those corners of the square a slightly grander character. The northern terrace is the shortest, comprising only eight houses, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central green is now laid to lawn, enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with established trees along its boundary. A children's playground to the southeast of the green includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911, and Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates to 1761 when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a Mr John Pollock. The site was then simply known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map in the 1830s, few buildings had been erected: only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills were recorded.

The village of Bessbrook 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 at 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 the planning and development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Development began with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s.

Richardson established Bessbrook as a social and moral experiment, providing his workers with good living conditions in the hope of fostering positive relations between employer and employed. He brought the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement. Bessbrook is famously known as a village without the "Three Ps" — no Public House, 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 Nos 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and distributed milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this ordinance 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 after purchasing his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a boom 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 increase his workforce. In 1865, Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him by the mid-1860s both the principal employer and the main landowner at Bessbrook. 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 architect of the houses at Charlemont Square is not known with certainty. Charles Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as 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. Charlemont Square does not appear 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 — described as "new row" — was the only completed side of the square, though its 26 buildings remained unoccupied. The remaining buildings along the square were 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 regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs (confined to the garden rather than the yard or family quarters), and were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 24 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Daniel Renshaw and valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed with frequency over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the building in its current layout. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by John Porter, employed as an electric tram conductor — the electric tramway between Newry and Bessbrook having opened in 1885. The census building return described No. 24 as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the occupants changed a number of times, but in 1949 a Mr John McGrory came into possession of the property, remaining there until at least the 1970s. During the Second World War, the mill workers at Bessbrook were tasked with supplying cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company continued to own housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased around 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer. The sale of property at Bessbrook was driven by the post-war downturn in the textile market, which led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 24 Charlemont Square East was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation.

The house 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 from 1895), which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning across the world. Bessbrook is considered internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, pre-dating those more widely celebrated English examples.

At the time of the most recent survey, No. 24 Charlemont Square East continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, notwithstanding the addition of the two-storey rear extension.