29 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

29 Charlemont Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house, built between 1862 and 1866 as part of the planned mill village of Bessbrook, County Armagh. The architect is unknown. The house is listed as part of a wider group, together with the other 65 buildings forming Charlemont Square, and sits within the Bessbrook Conservation Area designated in 1983.

Origins and Historical Context

Bessbrook was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased a derelict mill near Newry and began building housing for his factory workers. The site had earlier industrial origins dating to 1761, when a John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green there, renaming the place Bessbrook after his wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the 1830s the first edition Ordnance Survey map recorded little development beyond Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

Richardson laid out Fountain Street in the 1840s as the first phase of the village, and his overall planning approach was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the development of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson shared Penn's Quaker values and combined pragmatic business aims with a genuine philanthropic intent: he brought workers from the surrounding countryside, provided good living conditions, and established Bessbrook as a social experiment intended to improve the lives of his employees. The village became famously known as one without the "Three Ps" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — a stipulation the majority of residents voted to preserve in the 1870s. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to mill workers. 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) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged both 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. To accommodate the influx of new workers — the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215 between 1861 and 1871, and the number of houses from 73 to 296 — Richardson had Charlemont Square laid out between 1862 and 1866.

Charlemont Square was not shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but Griffith's Valuation of 1862 noted that Charlemont Square West (then captioned "new row") had been completed though remained unoccupied, and the remaining sides of the square were completed and occupied by at least 1866. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty, though C. E. B. Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect in 1881, may have carried out some work at Bessbrook in the 1860s, though his involvement may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings.

The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide records 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 Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), which in turn directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Bessbrook is therefore considered to be of international significance as one of the earliest planned mill villages.

Charlemont Square

The square as a whole consists of 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The east and west terraces are each stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. The northern terrace is the shortest at eight houses wide, though its buildings are distinctly larger two-and-a-half storey paired houses. Five larger two-and-a-half storey buildings at the southeastern end of the east terrace and one at the southeastern end of the west terrace have traditional shop fronts at ground floor level with dwellings above. Front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform, with each house set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. Rear facades are much altered with various extensions of differing 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, which 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 at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign a lease containing specific stipulations: fowl and pigs were not permitted in the family quarters or yard, though a pigsty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden; and tenants were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough to work in the mill.

No. 29 Charlemont Square East: History

No. 29 was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr Ormsby Hamilton, valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Its occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though its rateable value remained unaltered until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicted the building in its current layout. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by Elizabeth McGrory, whose entire family were employed as reelers and weavers by the Bessbrook Spinning Company; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The McGrory family remained at No. 29 until 1940, when a Mr Dominic O'Callaghan took possession and remained until at least the 1970s.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. The sale of the properties was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972. No. 29 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72). The building was listed in 1981 and included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area in 1983. The two-storey rear return was added in approximately 1979.

Exterior Description

The house is of L-plan form, facing southwest, with a single-bay two-storey rear return projecting to the northeast, added around 1979. Walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a granodiorite granite quarried locally from the former Charlemont Estate, a high-quality stone also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Dressings are in painted red brick. Stone cills are painted, and door and window openings have stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though the doorway and window heads are now generally squared off, with bands of painted smooth cement render to the surrounds. The pitched roof is finished in fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest with two black clay pots. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods to the front southwest elevation are metal with galvanised half-round guttering; to the rear northeast they are uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and flush with the main terrace of houses, which is set slightly back from the larger shop buildings at the southeastern end. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by painted rusticated brick dwarf walling topped by scrollwork painted metal railings, with a similar painted metal foot gate to the southeast. A paved path from the gate leads to a modern varnished panelled timber door positioned to the southeast of the facade. The door has two rectangular panels to its upper half with brass furniture, and a square-headed fanlight above with replacement glazing. There is a single window to the northwest side of the facade. The fenestration pattern is regular: two windows at first floor level align with the ground floor openings, all fitted with double-hung 1/1 sliding uPVC sash windows with window horns.

Northwest Elevation

The building is attached on the northwest to No. 30 Charlemont Square East.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast. A two-storey pitched-roof rear return at the northwest end of the elevation projects northeast to the site boundary. A narrow yard — a single reduced bay in width — is covered at first floor level by a lightweight timber structure with a monopitch clear Perspex roof, projecting from the rear return and resting on the yard boundary walling to the southeast. The yard is accessed through a planked painted timber door from the rear access route. The rear return has a uPVC door to its southeast side and a three-part window to its right. The rear elevation generally has a rough cement rendered finish, with concrete cills and top-opening uPVC casement windows. The rear return has a painted timber soffit and fascia with uPVC rainwater goods.

Southeast Elevation

The building is attached on the southeast to No. 28 Charlemont Square East.

Interior

The building retains its original plan form and staircase.

Condition and Alterations

The building retains most of its external character, despite the replacement of the original windows, door and roof slates, and the addition of a large extension to the rear around 1979.