5 College Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 5 College Square West is a two-storey, two-bay terraced dwelling built in approximately 1874 from locally quarried Newry Granodiorite stone. It forms part of College Square, a formally planned late-Victorian square in the model 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, who was also responsible for extending the mill. The listing covers the house together with its railings, gate and walling.

The building is L-plan in form, facing northeast, with a single-storey rear return added in approximately 1986. It is one of 18 similar houses forming the western terrace of College Square, which together with the north and east terraces makes up a total of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged around a central green. The square is primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast.

Architectural character and external appearance

The walling throughout is of generally random-coursed, rock-faced Newry Granodiorite. Dressings to door and window jambs are in stepped red brick, with painted stone cills and square-headed gauged-brick openings to doors and windows. The dwellings along the terrace are grouped in pairs, each pair being symmetrical: doors are grouped to the centre, flanked on opposite sides by single windows at ground-floor level. Each pair is set between raised roof verges in red brick with clay tile coping, rising to rectangular-section chimneys at apex level. The line of the verge continues vertically down each front facade as stepped red brick quoins, with recessed downpipes flanking each paired set of dwellings. Single dwellings at each end of the terrace are unpaired.

The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The rectangular-section chimney to the northwest is built in red and buff brick, with recessed panels of buff brick, a raised corbel course of red and buff brick, a decorative chimney cap and six pots. The eaves are flush, with a double red brick course, a single buff brick course and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Rainwater goods to the front are generally metal, with uPVC to the rear; half-round guttering discharges to circular-section downpipes. The downpipe to the front northeast elevation is cast iron and is recessed into the stepped red brick quoins.

Principal northeast elevation

The front elevation is flush with the rest of the terrace and is near-symmetrical with a regular fenestration pattern. There are two windows at first-floor level aligned with the openings below. All windows are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with horns and exposed sash boxes. At ground-floor level, the door surround is stepped red brick with a gauged brick arch and flush keystone detail to the head; the window to the northwest of the door has flush red brick detailing beneath the cill.

A modest concrete front yard contains an established shrub at its centre and is enclosed by hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate on slim posts to the southeast. A paved path leads from the gate to a painted timber door with three vertical panels to the lower half and six glazed sections above, fitted with brass furniture and with a square-headed fanlight over.

Southeast and northwest elevations

To the southeast, the building is attached to No. 4 College Square West. To the northwest it is attached to No. 6 College Square West.

Southwest rear elevation

Access to the rear southwest elevation is limited. Where visible, it consists of a single-storey pitched-roof return at the southeast end, projecting southwest into an enclosed rear L-shaped yard. The yard boundary wall is of random-coursed rock-faced local stone with a painted sheeted timber door leading from a rear access route. The rear return and ground-floor level of the elevation are finished in painted smooth cement render. At first-floor level, two timber casement windows with replacement slim concrete cills are visible in the original stone walling; the one to the southeast is reduced in height due to the roof apex of the rear return. To the northwest of the rear return, a single top-opening timber casement window is visible at ground-floor level on the southwest elevation, fitted with a galvanised metal shutter; a similar shutter is fitted to the ground-floor opening on the northwest side of the rear return.

Setting

No. 5 forms part of College Square West, one of three terraces of mill workers' dwellings enclosing a central green that is now divided into three sections. To the northwest is a bowling green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with a bowling pavilion and some established trees at the northwest boundary. To the southeast is a lawn also enclosed by hooped metal railings. In the centre is an open children's playground containing three granite monuments. One monument 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 moved to its current location, details the mill's history from ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 to the Bessbrook Spinning Company Limited in 1878.

Each house is set back from the perimeter road and footpath with a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear yards are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route; rear facades are generally much altered.

The east terrace is composed of 23 dwellings built in a similar style but with some significant differences in detailing. These are stepped in groups of six to respect the subtle relief of the site and terminate at the southeastern end with the village Institute building (the old Town Hall). The northern terrace, the shortest in the square at only 12 houses wide, is composed of distinctly larger two-storey dwellings, though similar in style to the others. The former school building is located at the southeast end of the western terrace.

Historical background

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761 when a woollen mill and bleach green were opened by John Pollock. The site was known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records few buildings on the site, the main structures being Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village of Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, was influenced by the planning work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. He established Bessbrook as a social experiment and model village, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s, with the intention of providing his workers with good living and working conditions and fostering positive relations between employer and employees. He brought the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement.

Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three Ps": Richardson stipulated there would be no public house and no pawn shop in the settlement, and therefore no need for police. In exchange, he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, a number of well-stocked shops at 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.

In 1863 Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company following the purchase of 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 the factory and workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making him both the main employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of new workers; between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, with the number of houses rising from 73 to 296.

College Square was laid out in stages between approximately 1874 and approximately 1890 in response to continued expansion of Richardson's business and 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." The 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 a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. This granite was used in most buildings at Bessbrook; it is of high quality and was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The western terrace of College Square was constructed between approximately 1874 and 1877: the Annual Revisions first recorded nos 1–12 College Square West in 1874, with nos 13–18 added to the row by 1877.

Each house at 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 — these could be kept in a pig-sty and fowl-run in the garden but not in the quarters occupied by the family or in the yard. Tenants were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 5 College Square West was constructed in approximately 1874 and was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr William Lawler, valued at £6. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades. During the 1911 Census of Ireland the house was occupied by George Morrison, a sawyer and machinist whose entire family were employed at Richardson's factory; the building return described it as a second-class dwelling with six inhabited rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) it was valued at £7 10 shillings and remained occupied by the Morrison family.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition; during the Second World War the mill workers supplied cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling its housing in Bessbrook from the 1960s onwards, driven by a post-war downturn in the local textile market which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. In approximately 1961 No. 5 College Square West was occupied by a Mr Herbert Morrow, who subsequently purchased it outright in approximately 1968. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value had risen to £10.

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. The Conservation Area Guide notes that the carefully 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 Bournville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), which in turn directly influenced town and country planning around the world. College Square and the earlier Charlemont Square (1862–66) to its west can be considered of international importance as part of an early planned mill village begun in the 1840s.

In approximately 1986 the building underwent extensive renovation, including the construction of the single-storey kitchen extension to the rear. A modest rear extension retains the original stone walling at first-floor level, though some modern finishes including casement windows detract from the building's character.