1 Charlemont Square North, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 1 Charlemont Square North is a two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay, end-of-terrace Victorian house built between approximately 1862 and 1866, forming part of Charlemont Square in the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The listing extends to the house, gate, railings and yard walling. It stands within the Bessbrook Conservation Area.

The house is built in an L-plan form facing southeast, constructed in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality local granite also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool), with painted red brick dressings and painted stone cills. The front elevation is near-symmetrical, with two windows at first-floor level aligned with a reduced-size window to the entrance porch and a wider window to the right-hand side at ground-floor level. Windows are generally top-opening timber casements; the wider ground-floor window has a single vertical glazing bar. The roof is pitched with fibre cement slates, roll-top black clay ridge tiles, and a three-part canted dormer window with a top-opening casement to the centre. A replacement rectangular-section brown brick chimney with two terracotta clay pots sits to the northeast. Projecting eaves have a painted timber fascia and soffit, with uPVC rainwater goods comprising half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

A single-storey gabled side entry porch projects from the southwest end of the front elevation. It has a painted smooth render finish and abuts the corresponding porch of No. 2 Charlemont Square North to the southwest — each pair of houses shares abutting gabled porches in this way, flanked by large rectangular-section chimneys and painted stepped red brick quoins. The porch has a painted timber wave-scroll bargeboard with finial and a single top-opening painted timber casement window to its southeast gable. The panelled painted timber entrance door has two glazed panels to its upper half and brass furniture.

A good-sized front yard is laid to lawn and enclosed by a red brick dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on circular-section painted metal posts with cast metal conical caps, centrally positioned on the southeast boundary. A concrete path leads from the gate to the porch door.

To the rear, the northwest elevation has a two-storey mono-pitched rear return at its southwest end, extended in approximately 1988, projecting to the rear yard boundary with no windows to its northwest wall. The rear elevation is generally finished in smooth cement render with top-opening timber casement windows on stone cills; the rear return has concrete cills. A painted timber door is set within smooth cement-rendered boundary walling to the northwest, with original random-coursed rock-faced stone walling to the northeast-facing section, leading from the rear access route into a rectangular yard one bay in width. There is a single window at first-floor level aligned with one at ground-floor level, and a small skylight visible in the roof. The rear return has a painted timber soffit and fascia.

The northeast gable faces a public footpath linking Charlemont Square to the southeast and the rear access route to the northwest. It has a smooth cement render to the plinth course and roughcast cement render above, with a brown brick mid-ridge chimney at the apex and projecting eaves with exposed purlin ends. The soffit is replacement planked uPVC with a uPVC fascia. The rear return on this elevation has a single window at first-floor level and a double side-opening casement window at ground-floor level, to the right of a painted timber door. Original random-coursed rock-faced yard boundary walling survives at the northwestern end of this facade.

The building retains its external Victorian character despite the replacement of its original windows (current casement frames were installed in 1999), roof slates, dormer and some internal fittings.

No. 1 Charlemont Square North is one of eight similar houses — arranged in pairs — forming the northern terrace of Charlemont Square. The northern terrace is the shortest of the three sides of the square, being only eight houses wide, but its houses are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey structures. Charlemont Square as a whole consists of 66 buildings in total arranged on three sides around a central green, 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. Five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West have traditional shopfronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The rear facades of the houses across the square are much altered, with various extensions of different shapes and sizes. The central green is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings with some 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. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath with a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling and hooped metal railings. Rear yards are generally larger, enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route.

The architect of the houses is not known with certainty. 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 role may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 by John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, to house the influx of workers brought to his expanding linen mill. Richardson had purchased a derelict mill at the site in 1845 and began building workers' housing in the immediate vicinity from that date, effectively founding the village of Bessbrook. In 1863 he became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company following the purchase of his brother's shares, and in 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses rising from 73 to 296. Richardson's layout of the village was influenced by the work of the American Quaker William Penn, who had been responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Bessbrook was established as a model village based on Quaker ideological principles. Richardson stipulated that there would be no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for a police presence in the settlement — giving rise to the village's reputation as a place without the "Three Ps." In exchange, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed 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 at Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century. Each house in the village 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, that fowl and pigs were not to be kept in the living quarters or yard (though pig-sties and fowl-runs were permitted in the garden), and that children must be sent to school until old enough for mill work.

Griffith's Valuation of 1862 noted that Charlemont Square West — described as "new row" — was the only side of the square then completed, though all 26 of its buildings remained unoccupied at that date. The square had not been depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. The remaining buildings were completed and occupied by at least 1866 according to the Annual Revisions. The Annual Revisions record that No. 1 Charlemont Square North was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms. Sarah Collins and was valued at £8. The occupants changed with frequency over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1930s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the house in its current layout, including the entrance porch and rear return; a tennis ground was also shown within the central green at that date. The 1911 Census records that No. 1 Charlemont Square North was occupied by William John Hare, employed as a Winding Master by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, and describes it as a second-class dwelling of eight rooms. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) increased the value of the house to £10, and records show the Hare family continuing to reside there until 1956, when a Mr. William J. Downey took occupation, remaining until 1970.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition. During the Second World War its workers supplied cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling its Charlemont Square housing to private individuals from the 1960s onwards, driven by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which ultimately led to the closure of the mill in 1972. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased in approximately 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer. No. 1 Charlemont Square North was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £15 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

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 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 in turn directly influenced town and country planning internationally. Bessbrook is therefore considered internationally significant as an early planned mill village, contemporary with and preceding those more widely celebrated English examples. At the time of the most recent survey the building continued to be used as a private dwelling.