6 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

6 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is an excellent example of a modest two-storey, two-bay, late-Victorian mid-terrace mill worker's house, built around 1883 to designs by an unknown architect, although possibly the work of John Hardy, civil engineer and architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company. One of 23 similar houses forming the eastern terrace of College Square, No. 6 is one of the few remaining intact houses on the square. It was converted into a local visitor attraction around 1996 by the Bessbrook Development Company.

Architectural Description

The house follows a rectangular plan form facing southwest. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality local granite), with stepped red brick dressings to the jambs, stone cills, and square-headed gauged-brick door and window openings. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest has a segmented half-round coping. Eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. Rainwater goods are generally cast iron, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes. Windows throughout are double-hung 3/3 sliding timber sash with window horns and granite cills.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. A modest front garden is enclosed by a red brick dwarf wall, with a paved path leading to a painted planked timber door; above the door is a square-headed fanlight with a single vertical glazing bar. A window sits to the northwest side at ground floor level. At first floor level, two windows align with the entrance door and the ground floor window below, giving a regular fenestration pattern.

Northwest Elevation

The building is attached to No. 7 College Square East at this side.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces northeast and is enclosed by a rock-faced, random-coursed stone boundary wall to the rear yard, accessed through a painted planked timber door from the rear access route. Fenestration here is irregular: there is a single window at centre first floor level, and at ground floor an off-centre door flanked by a window to its northwest and a smaller window to its southeast — all double-hung sliding timber sash, with the smaller window lacking glazing bars. The eaves here are flush with a single red brick corbel course and cast iron rainwater goods. In the northern corner of the rear yard there is a single-storey outbuilding with a monopitched natural slate roof and smooth rendered finish. The rear yard floor is finished in quarry tiles.

Southeast Elevation

The building is attached to No. 5 College Square East at this side.

Interior

The building retains most of its original character both externally and internally, including original room layouts, staircase, internal fittings, and enclosed rear yard.

Setting

No. 6 forms part of College Square East, itself part of a planned arrangement of 53 mill workers' dwellings comprising a formal square made up of east, north, and west terraces arranged around a central bowling green, playground, and lawn. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath with a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings, responding to the subtle relief of the site. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. To the rear, each yard is 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, while front facades are nearly uniform along the eastern terrace. The village Town Hall — the old Institute building — is located to the southeast.

The northern terrace is the shortest at only 12 houses wide; although similar in style, these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half storey buildings. The central area of the square is now divided into three sections, each laid to lawn. The northwest section contains a bowling pavilion and green enclosed by painted hooped metal railings with some established trees at its northwest boundary. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings sits to the southeast, and an open children's playground occupies the centre of the square.

The playground contains 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 noting that this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently moved to this location from the grounds of Bessbrook Mill, details the mill's history from its ownership by the Pollock family in 1760 through to the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd in 1878.

Historical Context

The development of industry at Bessbrook dates from 1761, when the first woollen mill and bleach green were opened by a John Pollock. The site was then simply known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records that few buildings had been erected at Bessbrook at that time; the only significant structures shown were 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 on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, in his own words, "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town, so on looking around, fixed upon a place near Newry … with water power and a thick population around, and in a country district where flax was cultivated in considerable quantities." Richardson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and 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.

Bessbrook was established as a model village in several phases, beginning with the laying out of Fountain Street in the 1840s. Richardson's philanthropic aims led him to bring the poor and unqualified from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to improve their circumstances. He is recorded as providing recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and distributions of milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers. Bessbrook became known as a village without the "Three Ps" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — a policy the majority of the population voted to preserve in the 1870s. To this day there remains no public house in Bessbrook, and police were not stationed there 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 experienced a boom 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 Richardson the principal employer and landowner in the village. 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 and the number of houses from 73 to 296.

College Square was laid out around 1883 as Richardson's business continued to expand. The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide described the mid-1880s as a "period of intense building activity in the village" in which "the earlier ideals of the plan were re-established with the building of College Square." The factory itself was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The two-storey houses at College Square were constructed along the north, west, and eastern sides of an open green intended for recreational use; the bowling green at the southern end was added in 1911. College Square was named after the primary school on its west side, erected in 1849. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty, though John Hardy — a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881 who was responsible for the factory extension — is a likely candidate. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The walling material is Newry Granodiorite, quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate. This stone was used in most buildings at Bessbrook and is of notably high quality — it was also 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.

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 regarding the keeping of fowl and pigs (which were not permitted in the family quarters or yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden), and a binding clause required tenants to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 6 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Robert Patterson and valued at £5 and 10 shillings, a valuation that remained unchanged until the 1950s. The occupants changed frequently over the following decades. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the house as occupied by Sarah Elizabeth Patterson, a boarding house keeper whose family were employed at Richardson's factory; the building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the value remained at £5 and 10 shillings, with a James McKee recorded as occupant.

During the 20th century the mill continued to expand, gaining international recognition; during the Second World War the mill workers were tasked with supplying cloth for uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of housing in Bessbrook until the 1960s, when the dwellings along College Square began to be sold to private individuals and firms — the majority of the houses on the square were purchased by a George Preston around 1969. The post-war downturn in the local textile market led to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 6 College Square East was purchased outright by George Preston in 1969, though the McKee family remained in residence; by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) its rateable value had risen to £8.

The house 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. 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 noted 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 thus considered internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s.

No. 6 College Square East is recognised as one of the best preserved houses along the row and is noted for the survival of its original room layouts, staircase, internal fittings, and enclosed rear yard. The building and its neighbouring terrace houses form an important group within the village.