2 College Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 2 College Square West is a two-storey, two-bay terraced mill workers' dwelling built in approximately 1874 from locally quarried Newry Granodiorite stone. It sits within College Square, Bessbrook, County Armagh, and forms part of a formally planned late-Victorian square — a rare occurrence in the province — comprising 53 dwellings arranged along north, west, and eastern terraces around a central green. The house is one of 18 similar properties forming the western terrace of the square, and its listing extends to include its railings and gate.

Origins and Historical Significance

The village of Bessbrook originated in 1761 when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on a site then known simply as "The Green." The village was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth ("Bess") and the nearby Camlough River ("Brook"). By the 1830s, few buildings had been erected; the first Ordnance Survey map records only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it stands 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 a derelict mill on the site and began constructing housing for his workers. Richardson later explained that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose a rural location near Newry with water power, a local flax-growing population, and accessible land. 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 aims led him to bring the poor and unqualified from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, in the hope that stable employment and good living conditions would encourage self-improvement.

Bessbrook is widely known as a village without the "Three P's": Richardson stipulated there would be no public house and no pawnshop in the settlement, and therefore no need for a police presence. In exchange, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and the distribution of milk, tea, and cocoa to workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house at 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 the cutting off of American cotton supplies drove demand for linen, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce in response. After Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, Richardson became both the principal employer and the main landowner in Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the population rose 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 in stages between approximately 1874 and 1890, reflecting a further period of expansion. The mid-1880s were described in the Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide 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 factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85 as part of these developments.

The architect of the College Square houses is not known with certainty, though a likely candidate is John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881 who was responsible for the factory extension. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

Every house in Bessbrook was owned by the Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign a lease agreement stipulating, among other things, that pigs and poultry must be kept in a sty or run in the garden and not in the yard or family quarters, and that children must attend school until old enough to work in the mill.

The Newry Granodiorite used in the construction of the College Square houses was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite is of notably high quality; it was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

Bessbrook's planned layout, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, is considered to have influenced the famous English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, which have in turn "directly influenced town and country planning all over the world." Both College Square and the earlier Charlemont Square could be considered of international importance in this context.

No. 2 College Square West was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1874 and was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Houston, valued at £6. Occupants changed with considerable frequency over the following decades. The 1911 Census records the house as occupied by James McGaffin, a local labourer whose children worked as weavers at Richardson's mill; it was then described as a second-class dwelling with six inhabited rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the building was valued at £7 10s and occupied by a Mr. Stanley McMinn.

During the Second World War the mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for military uniforms. The post-war downturn in the textile market led ultimately to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which it was occupied by the British Army. The Bessbrook Spinning Company had begun selling its housing stock in the 1960s as a consequence of these difficulties. A Mr. Thomas Sterritt occupied No. 2 College Square West from approximately 1955 and purchased the house outright in approximately 1968. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), its rateable value had risen to £10. 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."

Exterior Description

The building has a rectangular plan facing northeast, with a single-storey rear return and a covered yard extension to the rear. It is constructed in generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite walling. External detailing includes stepped red brick dressings to door and window jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings.

The dwellings along the terrace are grouped in pairs, each pair symmetrical, with doors grouped to the centre and a single window on each side at ground-floor level. Pairs are framed by raised roof verges in red brick with clay tile coping, rising to rectangular-section chimneys at apex level. The line of the verge is continued vertically down each front elevation in the form of stepped red brick quoins, with recessed downpipes flanking each pair of dwellings. Single dwellings at each end of the terrace are unpaired.

The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The rectangular-section red brick chimney to the southeast, rebuilt in rustic brick, carries six terracotta clay pots. The eaves are flush, with a double red brick course, a single buff brick course, and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, although the downpipe to the front northeast elevation is cast iron and recessed into the stepped red brick quoin walling.

Principal (Northeast) Elevation

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace and is near symmetrical, with a regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings. All windows are top-opening timber casements. At ground-floor level, the door surround has a stepped red brick surround and gauged brick arch with a flush keystone detail to the head; the window to the southeast side of the door has flush red brick detailing beneath the cill.

The entrance door is a painted sheeted timber door with brass furniture, set beneath a square-headed fanlight with a single vertical glazing bar. The modest front garden is laid to lawn and enclosed by a dwarf red brick wall topped with hooped painted metal railings, with a similar foot gate hung on slim posts to the northwest. A concrete path leads from the gate to the front door.

Southeast Elevation

To the southeast, the building is attached to No. 1 College Square West.

Southwest (Rear) Elevation

Access to the rear southwest elevation is limited, but where visible it shows a single-storey flat-roofed return at the southeast end, and a narrower monopitched covered yard extension to the northwest, both extending to the rear yard boundary. The flat-roofed return is finished with felt; the covered yard extension has a corrugated Perspex roof. Two uPVC casement windows are visible in the original stone walling at first-floor level. The yard boundary wall is finished with smooth cement render, and a painted sheeted timber door provides access from the rear access route to the covered yard extension.

Northwest Elevation

To the northwest, the building is attached to No. 3 College Square West.

Setting

No. 2 College Square West sits within the formal composition of College Square: 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged along north, west, and eastern terraces around a central area now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. The northwest section contains a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with established trees at its northwest boundary. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings is located to the southeast, and an open children's playground occupies the centre of the square, 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 to the opposite side recording that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, formerly in the grounds of Bessbrook Mill and recently moved to its current location, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

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. Rear yards are typically 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.

The eastern terrace is composed of 23 dwellings built in a similar style but with some significant differences in detailing; they are stepped in groups of six to respect the subtle relief of the site and terminate at their southeastern end with the village's former "Town Hall," the old Institute building. The northern terrace, the shortest in the square at only 12 houses wide, contains distinctly larger two-storey dwellings, similar in character to the other terraces but of greater scale. The former school building is located at the southeast end of the western terrace. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast.

Condition and Alterations

Some modern interventions detract from the building's character and heritage value. These include uPVC casement windows, modern finishes to the rear extension, and a smooth cement render finish to the rear yard boundary wall. The chimney to the southeast has been rebuilt in rustic brick. The modest rear extension does, however, maintain the original stone walling at first-floor level. The front northeast facade, with its locally quarried Newry Granodiorite stonework and carefully detailed brickwork, remains largely intact and contributes to the distinctive identity and sense of place that characterises Bessbrook as a whole.