8 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 8 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. It forms one of twenty-seven similar houses which, together with five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings at the south-eastern end, make up the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square — a formally designed Victorian square of 66 buildings in total, arranged on three sides around a central green and primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the south-east. The house is listed at Grade B2 and falls within the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The origins of Bessbrook as a settlement date to 1761, when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then simply known as "The Green." The name Bessbrook is said to derive from Pollock's wife Elizabeth ("Bess") and the nearby Camlough River ("Brook"). The first edition Ordnance Survey map of the 1830s records very little development at Bessbrook at that time, noting only Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it is known today was effectively founded in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began constructing housing for his factory workers. Richardson later recalled that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose this location near Newry for its water power, surrounding agricultural land growing flax, and available rural workforce. He was a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and his approach to the village combined pragmatic business interests with Quaker philanthropic values. His layout of Bessbrook was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker who had been responsible for planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century.

Richardson developed Bessbrook as a social experiment. He brought workers from the surrounding countryside — including the poor, the unqualified, and beggars — hoping that good living conditions and steady employment would encourage self-improvement. The village became famous as a settlement without the "Three P's": there was no public house, no pawn shop, and consequently no need for a police presence. In place of these, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at Nos. 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and distributed milk, tea, and cocoa to his workers. A majority of residents voted to preserve the ban on alcohol in the 1870s, and to this day there remains no public house in 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), when restricted access to American cotton drove up demand for linen. Richardson expanded both his factory and his workforce considerably during this period. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal landowner and employer 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, and Brett describes it as the centrepiece of the new developments at Bessbrook. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty, though Brett suggests that John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed company architect in 1881, may have carried out some earlier work at Bessbrook in the 1860s — though his involvement may have been confined to the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

The Bessbrook Conservation Area Guide notes that the carefully planned development of Bessbrook, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, directly influenced the design of the English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family in 1895), which have in turn "directly influenced town and country planning all over the world."

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 agreement containing several stipulations: they were not permitted to keep fowl or pigs within the family quarters or yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden. They were also required to send their children to school until old enough for mill work.

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 does not depict Charlemont Square, but construction had commenced by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year records that Charlemont Square West — noted as "new row" — was the only completed side of the square at that point, though all 26 of its buildings remained unoccupied. The remainder of the square, including the eastern terrace, was completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

HISTORY OF NO. 8 SPECIFICALLY

No. 8 Charlemont Square East was built between 1862 and 1866. The Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. James Robertson, with a valuation of £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently in subsequent decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current configuration. The 1911 Census of Ireland records that No. 8 was then occupied by Elizabeth Thompson, a seamstress employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company; the census building return 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 a William Black, who remained until 1947 when the property passed to a Mr. William J. Bradley. During the 20th century the Bessbrook Spinning Company continued to expand, gaining international recognition; during the Second World War, mill workers were engaged in producing cloth for military uniforms. The company retained ownership of its housing stock until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals. The majority of houses along the square were purchased around 1970 by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer. These sales were necessitated by the post-war decline in the local textile market, which led to the closure of the mill in 1972 — the building was subsequently occupied by the British Army.

No. 8 Charlemont Square East was occupied by a Mr. William McCune from 1961, who purchased the house outright in 1968. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) its value stood at £7 and 10 shillings. The house was listed in 1981. A two-storey rear extension providing an additional bedroom and kitchen space was added in approximately 1979, and the roof was replaced in approximately 2006. At the time of the second survey the house continued to be used as a private dwelling.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building is of L-plan form facing south-west, with a large two-storey rear return added in approximately 1979. The principal walling material is random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried locally 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 painted red brick. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads, though the door and window heads are generally now squared off with painted smooth cement render.

The roof is pitched fibre cement with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the north-west with two terracotta pots. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course, and the rainwater goods consist of metal ogee guttering discharging to circular-section uPVC downpipes.

The front elevation faces south-west and is near-symmetrical, set flush with the main terrace of houses and slightly set back from the larger shop buildings at the south-eastern end of the terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth cement rendered dwarf walling topped by a painted metal foot gate to the south-east. A concrete path from the gate leads to a six-panelled painted timber door positioned to the south-east of the façade, fitted with brass furniture, a square-headed fanlight above, and replacement glazing. The façade has a regular fenestration pattern with two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings; all windows on the front elevation have been replaced with uPVC top-opening casement units.

To the north-west the building is attached to No. 9 Charlemont Square East. To the south-east it is attached to No. 7 Charlemont Square East. The rear elevation, where visible, consists of a single-bay two-storey pitched-roof rear return at the south-eastern end, projecting north-east into an enclosed rear yard. A planked painted timber door set in the random-coursed rock-faced stone boundary walling leads from the rear access route into the yard; the back door is on the north-west side of the rear return. The rear elevation is generally finished in smooth cement render with timber top-opening casement windows.

SETTING

No. 8 forms part of the planned arrangement of Charlemont Square, whose east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to respect the subtle relief of the site. 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, and a larger rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear façades across the square are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes; front façades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform. Five larger buildings at the south-eastern end of the eastern terrace and one at the south-eastern end of the western terrace have traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses wide, but these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings.

The central area of the square is now laid to lawn and enclosed by hooped galvanised metal railings, with some established trees along its boundary. A children's playground is located to the south-east of the green and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in Bessbrook in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the south-east of the playground.