15 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

15 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 listing extends to the house itself together with its gate, railings, and yard walling.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is of L-plan form, facing southwest, with a single-storey rear return. Its walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate), with painted red brick dressings throughout. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though these heads are generally now squared off with painted smooth cement render. The pitched roof is finished in fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles; the eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. A rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the northwest retains two original buff clay pots. Rainwater goods to the front are metal with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes; uPVC rainwater goods are used to the rear.

The principal southwest-facing elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace line, set back from the larger shop buildings at the southeastern end of the square. The facade has a regular fenestration pattern, with two windows at first-floor level aligned directly above those at ground-floor level; all four openings are fitted with double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes. The entrance door is positioned to the southeast of the facade and is a modern varnished planked timber door with a single leaded glass panel to the top centre and a square-headed fanlight above. A modest paved concrete front yard is enclosed by smooth rendered dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings, with a painted metal foot gate to the southeast; a concrete path leads from the gate to the front door.

The northwest elevation is attached to No. 16 Charlemont Square East, and the southeast elevation is attached to No. 14. To the rear, the northeast elevation has limited access, but where visible it retains original random-coursed rock-faced stonework with one timber sash window visible at first-floor level. A single-storey flat-felt-roofed rear return at the northwest end projects northeast to the boundary of the enclosed rear yard, finished in smooth render. The rear yard boundary walling remains in near-original condition in random-coursed rock-faced stone, with a square-headed planked painted timber door giving onto a wide rear access route.

The original roof slates have been replaced (the building was reslated and its stone facade repointed in around 1980), and the front door is a modern replacement. The sliding sash window frames were installed in 1999. A single-storey flat-roof extension has been added to the rear.

SETTING

No. 15 forms part of Charlemont Square East, one of three terraces — East, West, and North — arranged around a central green to form a formally planned square of 66 buildings in total, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The East and West terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling and hooped metal railings. The five larger two-and-a-half-storey buildings at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square East (and one equivalent building on the West terrace) have traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at eight houses wide, but its buildings are distinctly larger, two-and-a-half-storey paired structures. The rear of each dwelling is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes, while front facades are nearly uniform along the East and West terraces. The central green is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with established trees at its boundary. A children's playground is located to the southeast and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911; Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL 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 then known simply as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. Few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook by the 1830s; the First Edition Ordnance Survey map records only Mount Caulfield House (the residence of the Nicholson family) and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

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 on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. In his own words, Richardson "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." Richardson's layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning and developing Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson possessed, according to Harrison, a "typical Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic expectation to provide jobs and good working conditions for his employees," and established Bessbrook as a social experiment where workers could both live and work in contentment. His philanthropic approach reportedly led him to bring the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, in the hope that he could 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 in the settlement, and therefore no need for police to be stationed there. In their place, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops (at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East), and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The strategy was effective — the majority of the population voted to preserve the ordinance in the 1870s — and to this day there remains no public house at Bessbrook. Police were not stationed at the village until the turn of the 20th century.

The village was established in phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate an influx of new workers: between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses rose from 73 to 296. 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 boom during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off; 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 by the mid-1860s both the main employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook.

The architect of the housing at Bessbrook is not known with certainty. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work in Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his role may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces along Charlemont Square were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company using Newry Granodiorite, produced locally at a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. Granite from the Bessbrook Quarry is of high quality and was used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

Charlemont Square does not appear on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. In that year, Griffith's Valuation noted that Charlemont Square West (captioned "new row") was the only side of the square to have been completed, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied. 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 to be kept in the family quarters or yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden), and were placed under obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 15 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Joseph Pearson, valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed with frequency over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. In 1911 the Census of Ireland records the house as occupied by William John Preston, a tenter who repaired power looms at Richardson's factory; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the house was occupied by a Mr. John Qua, whose family remained at the address until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company international fame. During the Second World War, mill workers were tasked with supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of 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 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970. The sale of property at Bessbrook 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. 15 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 (1956–72).

No. 15 Charlemont Square East was listed in 1981 and was 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 "have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world." Bessbrook predates Port Sunlight and Bourneville and is internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages of its kind. At the time of the second survey, No. 15 continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character.