10 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

10 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of one of the most historically significant planned mill villages in the British Isles. It forms part of the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square, a formally designed square of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green, and is one of twenty-seven similar houses in that terrace, which also includes five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings at its south-eastern end. The listing covers the house itself together with its gate, railings, and yard walling.

Historical and Social Context

Bessbrook's origins lie in 1761, when a John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook in honour of Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, as the first edition Ordnance Survey map records, very little had been built: the main structures were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it exists today was effectively founded in 1845, when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a prominent linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later explained that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town," and so chose a rural site near Newry with water power, an available local workforce, and a district where flax was grown in quantity. 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 combined pragmatic and altruistic aims, intending to provide good working conditions and decent living standards while encouraging self-improvement among workers drawn from the surrounding countryside, including the poor, the unqualified, and beggars.

Bessbrook became celebrated as a "model village" and is famously known as a place without the "Three Ps": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore, Richardson argued, no need for a police presence. In place of alcohol, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a range of well-stocked shops, and the distribution of milk, tea, and cocoa to his mill workers. This approach proved effective: the majority of the population voted to preserve the alcohol-free ordinance in the 1870s, and no public house exists in Bessbrook to this day. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863, following the purchase of his brother's shares, Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The local linen industry experienced a boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), as the interruption of American cotton supplies drove demand for linen. Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce during this period. In 1865, Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making Richardson the principal landowner and employer in the village. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the influx of new workers: between 1861 and 1871, Bessbrook's population rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses increased from 73 to 296.

The architect of the Charlemont Square houses is not known with certainty. Charles Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his involvement may have been limited to the mill buildings. The terraces were constructed by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The stone used throughout is Newry Granodiorite, quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite was used across most of Bessbrook's buildings and is of sufficiently high quality to have been 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 begun by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year notes that Charlemont Square West — described as "new row" — was the only completed side, though all 26 of its buildings remained unoccupied. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing specific clauses: for example, fowl and pigs were not permitted in the family quarters or yard (though a pigsty and fowl-run were allowed in the garden), and tenants were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough to work at the mill. Each house came with a garden or yard of approximately one eighth of an acre.

No. 10 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Hugh Baxter, at a valuation of £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unchanged until the 1950s. By the time of the 1911 Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by Robert Samuel McClelland, a mechanic employed at Richardson's mill. The census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. The McClelland family remained at the address until 1955, when the house passed to a Mr William Kernaghan, who purchased it outright in 1968; at that point it was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72).

During the 20th century the Bessbrook mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition, and during the Second World War its workers produced cloth for military uniforms. The post-war decline in the textile market led to the mill's closure in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. From the 1960s onwards the Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling its housing stock to private individuals and firms; the majority of houses along Charlemont Square were purchased around 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer.

No. 10 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. The Conservation Area Guide notes that Bessbrook's carefully planned development — including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square — influenced the design of the 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." Bessbrook is also noted as being contemporary with, and predating, Port Sunlight and Bourneville, making it internationally significant as an early example of the planned industrial village.

Architecture

The house takes an L-plan form facing south-west, with a single-storey rear return added at the rear around 1984. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite, with painted red brick dressings. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds, with gauged-brick cambered heads. The roof is pitched, finished in fibre cement rather than the original slates, with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the north-west with two red clay pots. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The principal elevation faces south-west and is near-symmetrical, sitting flush with the main terrace. It is set back slightly from the larger shop buildings at the south-eastern end of the row. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling topped by plain hooped painted metal railings; a matching foot gate is hung on slim square-section metal posts to the south-east. A concrete path leads from the gate to a panelled painted timber door positioned to the south-east of the façade. The door has a single rectangular glazed upper panel, black iron furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. The façade has a regular fenestration pattern, with two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings. Windows to the front north-west elevation are generally double-hung timber sliding sash windows with window horns; windows to the rear north-east elevation and the rear return are timber top-opening casements.

To the north-west, the building is attached to No. 11 Charlemont Square East. To the south-east, it is attached to No. 9 Charlemont Square East.

The rear elevation faces north-east and has a single-bay, single-storey flat-roofed return at the south-east, projecting into the rear yard — this is the addition of around 1984. A planked painted timber door leads from a rear access route into a narrow L-shaped yard, a single bay in width at its north-west extent, which leads in turn to the back door on the north-west side of the rear return. The rear elevation is finished in generally smooth cement render, with timber top-opening casement windows; the window openings in the original rear facade have been enlarged and fitted with replacement concrete cills.

The original roof slates and internal fittings have been replaced, and the rear single-storey flat-roofed extension detracts somewhat from the building's character, but the front elevation retains its Victorian appearance.

Setting

No. 10 forms part of a planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops forming the east, north, and west terraces of Charlemont Square. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings, reflecting the gentle relief of the site. Each dwelling generally has a larger rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling, with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear façades across the square are much altered, with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. Front façades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform; five larger buildings at the south-east end of Charlemont Square East and one at the south-east end of Charlemont Square West have traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace, the shortest side at only eight houses wide, is made up of distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings.

The central area of the square is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings, with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the south-east, which includes a monument commemorating the installation of electric lighting in Bessbrook in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the south-east of the playground.