26 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

26 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian end-of-terrace house, built around 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of Charlemont Square West, a formally planned terrace of twenty-six houses — twenty-five of which are similar dwellings, together with one larger two-storey-with-attic shop building to the southeast. Together the three terraces of Charlemont Square comprise sixty-six buildings in total, arranged around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The house is listed together with its gate, railings and yard walling.

Origins and Historical Context

Bessbrook's origins lie in 1761 when John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site, then known simply as 'The Green'. The village 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, few buildings had been erected; the only significant structures recorded 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 and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, later described his motivation in his own words: he '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.' 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 philanthropic spirit led him to bring the poor, the unqualified and beggars from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to encourage self-improvement. He established the village as a social experiment, providing good living and working conditions to foster positive relationships between employer and employees.

Bessbrook is famously 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 to be stationed there. In their place he provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops at numbers 1–5 Charlemont Square East, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to his mill workers. The strategy proved effective — the majority of the population voted to preserve the 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, following the purchase of his brother's shares, Richardson became sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off. Richardson took advantage of this by greatly enlarging his factory and increasing his workforce. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson both the principal employer and the principal landowner at Bessbrook by the mid-1860s.

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. The square was not yet depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but by 1862 Griffith's Valuation noted that Charlemont Square West — described as 'new row' — was the only side of the square to have been completed, though all twenty-six buildings along its length remained unoccupied at that date. The remainder of the buildings around the square were completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

The architect of the houses has not been identified with certainty. Charles 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 role may have been limited to expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The houses are constructed of Newry Granodiorite, a local granite quarried from a quarry opened on the former Charlemont Estate. This stone was used throughout Bessbrook and is of sufficiently high quality to have been used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool.

Each house at Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and possessed between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations including conditions on the keeping of fowl and pigs — these were not to be found in the living quarters or the yard, though a pig-sty and fowl-run were permitted in the garden. Tenants were also obliged to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

Bessbrook is considered internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s, and its carefully planned development — including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square — is considered to have influenced the later English model villages of 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.

History of No. 26

No. 26 Charlemont Square West was constructed around 1862. The Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr William Donaldson and valued at £5 and 10 shillings. The occupants changed with frequency over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. By 1911, according to the Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by Thomas Lawson, a general labourer whose family were employed at Richardson's factory. The census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of five rooms. The Lawson family continued to occupy No. 26 until 1961, when it passed to a Mr Albert Hazlett.

During the 20th century Bessbrook Mill continued to expand, gaining the Bessbrook Spinning Company 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 Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. The post-war downturn in the local textile market foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972, after which the building was occupied by the British Army. No. 26 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and its value was increased to £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland.

The building 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. Around 1980 the house underwent extensive renovation, including reslating of its roof, repointing of its stonework and the addition of cast iron rainwater goods. A two-storey rear return was added around 1988, and the current sliding sash window frames were installed in 1999. At the time of the most recent survey, the building continued to be used as a private dwelling and retained its original Victorian character despite the modern rear extension.

Exterior Description

The building is of L-plan form, facing northeast, with a large two-storey rear return added around 1988. The walling is generally random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite with painted red brick dressings. Window and door openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to gauged-brick cambered heads. The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement tiles with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest, now rendered, with two buff clay pots. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods to the front northeast elevation are metal; those to the rear southwest are uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (Northeast) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace of houses to the southeast. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by a concrete dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a similar foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a sheeted painted timber door positioned to the southeast of the façade, with brass furniture and a square-headed fanlight above. There is one window to the northwest side of the door at ground-floor level, and two windows at first-floor level aligned with the ground-floor openings. All windows are double-hung sliding timber sash windows with window horns. Painted red brick quoins mark the northern corner of the elevation.

Northwest Elevation

The northwest elevation has a generally smooth cement-rendered finish, with a mid-ridge chimney to the centre. Hooped painted metal railings enclose the front yard at the northeast end, and random-coursed rock-faced boundary walling encloses the rear yard at the southwest.

Southwest (Rear) Elevation

The rear elevation faces southwest. A single-bay, two-storey pitched-roof rear return projects to the southeast into an L-shaped rear yard. This return has a single two-part top-opening casement window at first-floor level and a similar window at ground-floor level facing southwest. On the northwest side of the rear return there is a single two-part casement window at first-floor level, above a painted timber door with a side window at ground-floor level. The main rear elevation has single top-opening timber casement windows at both first-floor and ground-floor levels facing southwest. A sheeted painted timber door in the random-coursed rock-faced boundary wall gives access from the rear service route to a narrow yard, which reduces to a single bay at its northwest extent. The yard boundary walling has a smooth cement-rendered inner face. The main rear elevation is generally smooth cement rendered with uPVC top- or side-opening casement windows and concrete cills. The rear return has fibre cement roof tiles, a painted timber fascia and soffit, and uPVC rainwater goods.

Southeast Elevation

To the southeast, the building is attached to No. 25 Charlemont Square West.

Setting

No. 26 forms part of Charlemont Square West, itself part of a planned arrangement of sixty-six mill workers' 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, with a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings, following 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 opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear façades are much altered with various extensions of different shapes and sizes. Front façades are nearly uniform along the east and west terraces, with five larger buildings to the southeast of Charlemont Square East and one to the southeast of Charlemont Square West having traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest, being only eight houses in width, though these buildings are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired structures. The central area of the square 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 and includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1911. Bessbrook's War Memorial is centrally located to the southeast of the playground.