5 College Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 5 College Square North is a modest two-storey, two-bay terraced dwelling built in approximately 1890 as part of a planned mill workers' square in the village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. It is constructed of local stone and takes an L-plan form facing southeast, with a single-storey rear return. 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, who was also responsible for the factory extension of 1884–85.

The building is one of twelve similar houses forming the northern terrace of College Square, a formally designed late-Victorian square comprising 53 mill workers' dwellings in total, arranged along three sides around a central bowling green, playground and lawn. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The northern terrace is the shortest of the three, but its houses are distinctly larger two-storey buildings with steeply pitched roofs compared to those on the other two sides.

The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite — a locally quarried granite of high quality, the same stone used to build Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The front southeast facade has stepped red brick dressings to jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. The pitched roof is covered in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. There are rectangular-section red brick chimneys to the southwest and northeast, each with a combination of buff and terracotta clay pots. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above — though this decorative eaves course to the front facade is currently masked by modern electrical wiring. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, with one single cast iron downpipe retained to the centre of the southeast elevation.

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace and near-symmetrical, with a regular fenestration pattern: two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings, all being top-opening timber casements. A tarmac path from a foot gate leads to a panelled painted timber door with two glazed panels to its upper half and a square-headed fanlight above, with a window to the southwest side of the door. The modest front yard is tarmaced with some established shrubs in defined planting borders, and is enclosed by red brick dwarf walling topped with hooped painted metal railings, with a similar gate hung on slim posts to the northeast.

To the southwest the building is attached to No. 4 College Square North, and to the northeast to No. 6. Access to the rear northwest elevation is limited, but where visible it consists of original stone walling with a single timber casement window to the centre at first-floor level. At ground-floor level there is a single top-opening casement window to the southwest (now boarded up) and a single-storey return at the northeast projecting into an enclosed rear yard. The rear return has a flat felt-covered roof and a painted timber two-part glazed back door to its southwest side with a timber casement window to the left-hand side of the door (also now boarded up). The ground floor and rear return both have a painted smooth render finish. An area of the yard to the southwest of the rear return is covered by a monopitched corrugated Perspex roof. The rear yard boundary walling is of random-coursed rock-faced stone, with a painted sheeted timber door leading from the rear access route.

The single-storey rear extension is considered more sympathetic than the larger two-storey returns seen elsewhere along the terrace, as it is subservient to the original building, retains first-floor level detailing and the original rear yard boundary walling, and therefore causes significantly less harm to the building's overall character.

The wider setting of College Square is of considerable architectural and historical significance. The eastern terrace is composed of 23 dwellings stepped in groups of six to follow the subtle relief of the site, terminating at its southeastern end with the village Institute building (the old Town Hall). The western terrace comprises 18 dwellings arranged largely in pairs in a similar style but with some differences in detailing, with a former school building at its southeastern end. The central area of the square is divided into three sections of lawn: a bowling green with a pavilion to the northwest enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, a lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings to the southeast, and an open children's playground in the centre. The playground contains three granite monuments. One 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 that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently moved from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.

The village of Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers. The site had originally been developed in 1761 when John Pollock opened a woollen mill and bleach green there; it was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s the first edition Ordnance Survey map recorded only a handful of significant structures. Richardson laid out the village as a deliberate social experiment informed by his Quaker beliefs and influenced by the town planning of William Penn's Philadelphia, intending to provide workers with good living conditions and thereby foster positive relations between employer and employee. He brought workers from the surrounding countryside and provided recreational and educational facilities, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his workforce. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — a condition the majority of residents voted to preserve in the 1870s, and which remains in effect today.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house workers drawn in during the boom years of the American Civil War (1861–65), during which period the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215 and the number of houses from 73 to 296. College Square followed in stages between approximately 1874 and 1890 as Richardson's business continued to expand. The factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85 and the terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. Annual Revisions record that Nos. 1–12 College Square North were erected in approximately 1890 as the last row of the square to be completed.

Each house was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement stipulating, among other things, the keeping of animals away from living quarters and the obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 5 College Square North was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr George Morrison and valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The property changed occupants frequently in the following decades. Under the 1911 Census of Ireland it was occupied by a Ms Annie Walsh, and was described as a second-class dwelling with five inhabited rooms and outoffices comprising a cow house, piggery and shed. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the building remained valued at £5 and 10 shillings and was occupied by a Ms Martha Maginnis. During the Second World War the mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling its housing stock in Bessbrook from the 1960s onwards, as the post-war decline in the local textile market led to the closure of the mill in 1972. The Maginnis family purchased No. 5 outright in approximately 1969, by which point the total rateable value had risen to £8. The property was listed in 1980 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983. An extensive renovation took place in approximately 1996, which included replacement of the window frames to the front facade.

Both College Square and the earlier Charlemont Square are considered to be of international significance as part of one of the earliest planned mill villages in these islands, begun in the 1840s. The carefully planned development of Bessbrook is acknowledged to have influenced the later English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Cadbury's Bourneville (1895), which in turn directly influenced town and country planning across the world.