13 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

13 Charlemont Square West is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian mid-terrace house, built in around 1862 by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to designs by an architect whose identity remains unknown. The listing covers the house itself together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

The building is L-plan in form, facing northeast, and is constructed in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate, the same stone used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Dressings are in red brick, with painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to the gauged-brick cambered door and window openings. To the front northeast elevation, the original red brick openings have been further formalised with smooth cement render surrounds. The pitched roof is now covered in fibre cement slates with angled black clay ridge tiles, replacing the original slating during a renovation carried out around 1980. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the northwest, now rendered, with a single black clay pot. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods to the front northeast elevation are uPVC; those to the rear southwest are cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The front elevation is nearly symmetrical, flush with the main terrace line. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by a concrete dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A paved path leads from the gate to a four-panelled painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade; the door has a semi-circular glazed section at the top with radial glazing bars, black iron furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above. To the northwest of the ground floor there is a single window opening. The facade has a regular fenestration pattern, with two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings; all windows are 1-over-1 double-hung sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes. The current sash frames were installed in 1999.

To the northwest the building is attached to No. 14 Charlemont Square West, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 12 Charlemont Square West.

The rear southwest elevation faces into a concrete yard enclosed by random-coursed rock-faced stone boundary walling, accessed through a sheeted painted timber door from a rear access route. The boundary walling retains a small brick-arched drainage feature to the northwest. At ground-floor level to the southeast end of the rear elevation there is a wider-than-standard side-opening timber casement window with a replacement concrete cill; at first-floor level to the centre of the rear elevation there is a double-hung sliding timber sash window. The rear elevation is generally finished in smooth render, with timber casement windows and concrete cills at ground-floor level. From the northwest end of the rear facade, a single-storey rear return projects southwest to the yard boundary wall; this return has a smooth cement render finish and a flat felt-covered roof, and is of later addition. The southeast side of the rear return has a painted timber panelled door with two glazed upper panels, and a top-opening timber casement window to its left.

No. 13 is one of twenty-five similar houses which, together with a larger two-storey-with-attic shop building to the southeast, form the western terrace of Charlemont Square. In total the square comprises 66 buildings arranged along its north, west and eastern sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The terraces to the east and west are stepped in groups of two dwellings, following the subtle relief of the site. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform; five larger buildings at the southeast end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeast end of Charlemont Square West have traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses wide, though these buildings are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired structures. Rear facades across the square are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. The central area of the square is 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.

The village of Bessbrook and its planned square carry considerable local, national and international historical significance. The development of industry in the area dates to 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a John Pollock. The site was known simply as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records very little built development at Bessbrook at that time, noting only 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 linen merchant from Lambeg and a member of the Religious Society of Friends, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson 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 with water power and local flax cultivation. 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 established Bessbrook as a social experiment — a model village where workers could live and work in good conditions. His philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, with the aim of encouraging self-improvement. He provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to mill workers.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three Ps": by Richardson's stipulation there was no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police. In exchange, residents received the facilities described above. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and to this day no public house exists at Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1863, Richardson became the 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) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson took advantage by greatly enlarging the factory and his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson both the principal employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook by the mid-1860s. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215 and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate this influx of workers. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty; C. E. B. Brett has suggested 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 expansion of the mill buildings. The square was not depicted 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 completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866.

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 stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs (permitted in a garden pig-sty or fowl-run but not in the family quarters or yard) and a binding clause requiring their children to attend school until old enough for mill work. Each dwelling had a garden or yard of approximately one eighth of an acre.

No. 13 Charlemont Square West was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Ms Jane Martin and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The 1911 Census of Ireland records the house as occupied by Mr Ambrose Molloy, employed at the Bessbrook Spinning Company as a damask weaver, and describes 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 the Barron family, who remained at the address until 1970.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand and gained international recognition. During the Second World War its workers were tasked with producing cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the Charlemont Square dwellings until the 1960s, when they began to be sold to private individuals and firms; the majority of the houses along the square were purchased around 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer. This sale of property was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972 — the building was subsequently occupied by the British Army. No. 13 was purchased by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and its value was increased to £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

The building 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. Around 1980 No. 13 underwent an extensive renovation that included repointing of its stonework, reslating of its roof, and the installation of cast iron rainwater goods. At the time of the second survey the building remained in use as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character, notwithstanding the addition of the single-storey flat-roofed rear return.

Bessbrook is regarded as internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, contemporary with — and considered to have influenced — the famous 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.