5 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 5 College Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay, mid-terrace house built around 1883, forming part of the eastern terrace of College Square in the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. 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. The house is listed at Grade B2 and falls within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983. The listing covers the house and its yard walling.

The building is one of 23 similar houses forming the eastern side of College Square, which together with the village Town Hall (the old Institute building) makes up that terrace. College Square as a whole comprises 53 mill workers' dwellings in total, arranged along three sides — east, north and west — around a central bowling green, playground and lawn, with the square primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The northern terrace is the shortest at 12 houses wide, though those dwellings are distinctly larger two-and-a-half storey buildings. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. The eastern terrace steps in groups of six dwellings, following the subtle relief of the site. Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped with hooped metal railings.

The house is of L-plan form facing southwest, with a two-storey rear return. The walls are built in generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate and used throughout Bessbrook — with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings to both doors and windows. The pitched roof is now finished in fibre cement tiles with angled black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original natural slates. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest carries four black clay pots. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, with metal ogee guttering to the rear return.

The principal elevation faces southwest and is nearly symmetrical, sitting flush with the rest of the terrace. A concrete path at the southeast end leads to a four-panelled painted timber door, which has a semi-circular glazed section at the top with radial glazing bars, painted metal furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. A window sits to the northwest side of the ground floor. At first floor level there are two windows aligned with the entrance door and ground floor window, giving a regular fenestration pattern throughout. The windows are generally one-over-one double-hung sliding timber sash with window horns.

To the northwest the house is attached to No. 6 College Square East, and to the southeast to No. 4 College Square East. Access to the rear northeast-facing elevation is limited, but where visible it consists of a two-storey pitched-roof rear return projecting into an L-shaped rear yard, reduced to a single bay in width at its northwest extent. The rear return has a single top-and-side-opening timber casement window visible at first floor level facing northeast, and a single top-opening casement window to the first floor of the main rear elevation. The rear facades are generally much altered; the rear walls are of rough-cast cement render with timber casement windows and concrete cills, and the rear yard is enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route.

The house retains its external character despite several alterations: the original natural slate roof has been replaced with fibre cement tiles, the original front door has been replaced, and the original front railings are gone. A modern two-storey rear return was added around 1985.

The central area of College Square is now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. To the northwest is a bowling pavilion and bowling green, enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with established trees at the northwest boundary, the bowling green having been added in 1911. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings sits to the southeast. In the centre is an open children's playground containing 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 recording that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, formerly in the grounds of Bessbrook Mill and recently relocated to its present position in the square, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.

College Square has considerable historical and social importance as part of the planned village of Bessbrook. The development of industry at the site 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," and was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth — known as Bess — and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook; the principal structures depicted were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began constructing housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later recorded that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town," and chose a country district near Newry where water power was available and flax was grown locally. The village was laid out in phases, beginning with Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson's approach to planning was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson himself possessed, in the words of one historian, "a typical Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic expectation to provide jobs and good working conditions for his employees," and the village was conceived as a social experiment in which workers could live and work contentedly. He brought the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping they would improve themselves and abandon old habits.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for a police presence — a condition Richardson stipulated from the outset. In place of a public house, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to mill workers. The population voted in the 1870s to maintain the prohibition on alcohol, and to this day there is no public house in 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 after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making him the principal employer and landowner in the village. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to house the influx of new workers; between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215 and the number of houses from 73 to 296. Each house at Bessbrook, owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required under their lease to comply with stipulations regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs — permitted in a sty or run in the garden but not in the house or yard — and were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

College Square was laid out around 1883 in response to further expansion of Richardson's business and the resulting growth in his workforce. 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." Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, using Newry Granodiorite from the local quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate — the same high-quality granite used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The houses were first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883.

No. 5 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Patrick Greener and valued at £5 and 10 shillings, at which valuation it remained until the 1950s. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades. By the 1911 Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by Samuel Paul, employed as a power loom tenter at the local factory; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) it remained valued at £5 and 10 shillings and was still occupied by Samuel Paul. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the building was occupied by a Mr Richard Bothwell and valued at £8.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the College Square houses until the 1960s, when the post-war downturn in the textile market forced the sale of its housing stock. The majority of houses in the square were purchased around 1969 by a Mr George Preston, who also purchased No. 5 outright in that year. The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. No. 5 College Square East was listed in 1981.

Bessbrook is internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages in the British Isles, its development having begun in the 1840s. The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide records that the carefully planned development of the village, including the uniform terraces of Charlemont Square and College Square, influenced the design of the later English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888) and Bourneville, developed by the Cadbury family from 1895, which in turn "directly influenced town and country planning all over the world."