21 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

21 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This 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. The listing covers the house itself together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

Historical and Social Context

Bessbrook's origins lie in 1761 when a John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as "The Green." The settlement was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, when the first Ordnance Survey map was made, the area was still sparsely built up, showing little beyond Mount Caulfield House and a handful of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

The village as it exists today 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 (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson explained his thinking plainly: he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and sought out a country district with water power, a ready workforce 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's approach was a social experiment as much as a commercial venture. He brought in the poor and unemployed from the surrounding countryside, hoping to improve their living conditions and habits. The village became well known as a settlement without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop and therefore no need for police — a condition Richardson reinforced by providing recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and the distribution of milk, tea and cocoa to his mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s, and no public house has ever opened in 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 after buying out 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 expanded both his factory and workforce accordingly. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson by the mid-1860s the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871, the village's population 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 the influx of new workers. The architect is not known with certainty; C. E. B. Brett suggests 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 the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company.

Every house at Bessbrook was owned by the Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing a number of conditions: fowl and pigs were not permitted in the parts of the house occupied by the family or in the yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were allowed in the garden; and tenants were obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough to work in the mill.

The Bessbrook quarry, opened on the former Charlemont Estate, produced the local Newry Granodiorite used throughout the village. The stone 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.

Charlemont Square is internationally significant as an early planned mill village. Its carefully planned development, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, predates and is considered to have influenced the later 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.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the housing along Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when properties 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. The sale of property was driven by the post-war decline in the local textile market, which led eventually to the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the mill building was occupied by the British Army.

No. 21 Charlemont Square East was first let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr William Hamilton and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Its occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though its valuation remained the same until the 1950s. The 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan shows the building in its current form. The 1911 Census of Ireland records the house as a second-class dwelling of five rooms, occupied by Sarah Anne Rowland, a housekeeper whose family were employed as weavers at the mill. The Rowland family continued to live here until 1968. The house was purchased outright by a Mr Chapman in 1968 and was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72). No. 21 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.

Architectural Description

No. 21 is one of twenty-seven similar two-storey houses which, together with five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings to the south-east, form the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square: a formally designed square of 66 buildings in total arranged on three sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the south-east. The building takes an L-plan form facing south-west.

The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite with painted red brick dressings. Window openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds with gauged-brick cambered heads. The surrounds to the ground-floor window and doorway on the south-west elevation have been altered and are now painted smooth cement render with imitation brickwork lining to the stepped surrounds. The roof is pitched and clad in fibre cement slates with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the north-west with a single black clay pot. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are generally half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes — metal to the south-west elevation and uPVC to the rear north-east.

Principal (South-West) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace, which is set slightly back from the larger shop buildings at its south-eastern end. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth-rendered dwarf walling topped with hooped metal railings, with a similar painted metal gate to the south-east. A quarry tile and concrete path leads from the gate to a four-panelled painted timber door positioned to the south-east of the facade, with a semi-circular glazed section at its head, black iron door furniture and a rectangular fanlight above. There is a window to the north-west side of the facade. The fenestration follows a regular pattern: two windows at first-floor level are aligned with the ground-floor openings, all fitted with double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash windows with horns and exposed sash boxes.

North-West Elevation

The building is attached to No. 22 Charlemont Square East on this side.

North-East (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces north-east and is enclosed by smooth-rendered stone boundary walling accessed through a planked painted timber door from the rear access route. The rear yard has a mixture of quarry tile and concrete flooring. At ground-floor level on the south-west end of the elevation there is a wider-than-standard side-opening casement window with a replacement concrete cill. A double-hung sliding timber sash window sits at first-floor level in the centre of the elevation. From the north-west end of the rear facade, a single-storey rear return projects north-east to the boundary wall; it has a flat felt-covered roof and was added in approximately 1989. The south-east side of the rear return has a painted timber door with a glazed upper half, a top-opening timber casement window to its right, and a separate boiler house to the right of that window, accessed from the yard through a planked painted timber door. The boiler house appears to incorporate an earlier outbuilding and retains its original planked timber door. The rear elevation is generally finished in smooth render with concrete cills and timber casement windows at ground-floor level, pebble-dash walling at first-floor level, and smooth cement render to the rear return. Rainwater goods to the rear are uPVC.

South-East Elevation

The building is attached to No. 20 Charlemont Square East on this side.

Setting

No. 21 forms part of the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square, a planned arrangement of 66 dwellings and shops forming a formal square with east, north and west terraces arranged around a central green. Each house is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard enclosed by dwarf walling topped with hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to follow the subtle relief of the site. Each dwelling generally has a larger rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling with a square-headed doorway onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades along the square are much altered with various extensions of different shapes and sizes, while the front facades along the east and west terraces are nearly uniform. Five larger buildings at the south-east end of Charlemont Square East and one at the south-east end of Charlemont Square West have traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest, being only eight buildings wide, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings.

The central area of the square is 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 and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the south-east of the playground.

Alterations

The house retains its external Victorian character despite several alterations. The original roof slates and internal fittings have been replaced. Around 1980 the stone facade was repointed and cast iron rainwater goods were installed. The single-storey flat-roofed rear return was added in approximately 1989. The current sliding sash window frames were installed in 1999.