27 Charlemont Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

27 Charlemont Square East is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian terraced house built between 1862 and 1866, forming part of one of the most historically significant planned mill villages in the British Isles. The listing extent covers the house itself together with its gate, railings, and yard walling.

The house is of L-plan form, facing southwest, with a single-storey rear return. Its walls are built in generally 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. The stonework is dressed with painted red brick, with painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds to the gauged-brick cambered door and window openings, though the window heads are now generally squared off with painted smooth cement render. The pitched roof is finished in fibre cement rather than the original slates, with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the northwest, topped by a single terracotta clay pot. The eaves are flush with a red brick corbel course beneath, and rainwater is collected by cast iron half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The principal southwest-facing elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace line, which is itself set slightly back from the larger shop buildings at the southeastern end of the square. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth rendered dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings, with a painted metal foot gate to the southeast. A paved path leads from the gate to the front door, which is positioned to the southeast of the facade. The door is a six-panel varnished timber replacement; its top half has two elongated rectangular panels flanking a central glazed section with frosted and coloured glazing. There is a square-headed fanlight above with clear glass. A window occupies the northwest side of the ground floor. At first-floor level, two windows align with the ground-floor openings; all windows are double-hung 1/1 sliding timber sash with window horns and exposed sash boxes, installed in 1999. The original front door has been replaced, and the original roof slates have been substituted with fibre cement, both of which detract somewhat from the building's external character.

To the northwest the building is attached to No. 28 Charlemont Square East, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 26 Charlemont Square East. The northeast rear elevation is largely inaccessible but, where visible, retains its original random-coursed rock-faced stonework with one timber sash window visible at first-floor level. A single-storey flat-roof rear return projects to the northeast at the northwest end of the rear elevation; this return has a smooth rendered finish and a felt roof, with uPVC rainwater goods. The rear yard boundary walling, in random-coursed rubble stone with a square-headed door opening onto the rear access route, remains in near-original condition. Rear facades across the square more generally are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes.

The house is one of twenty-seven similar two-storey dwellings which, together with five larger two-and-a-half-storey shop buildings to the southeast, form the eastern terrace of Charlemont Square. In total, the square comprises 66 buildings arranged on three sides around a central green, primarily accessed from Fountain Street to the southeast. The terraces to the east and west are stepped in groups of two dwellings, reflecting the subtle relief of the site. The five larger buildings at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeastern end of Charlemont Square West carry traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest — only eight houses wide — but these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. 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 to the southeast includes a monument to the installation of electric lighting in 1888 (1911 being when electric lighting was installed), and Bessbrook's War Memorial stands centrally to the southeast of the playground. Each house in the square is set back from the perimeter public road and footpath behind a modest front yard typically enclosed by dwarf walling and hooped railings, with a larger rear yard enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling.

The architectural interest of No. 27 lies in its style, proportion, and ornamentation as part of this formally designed Victorian composition, as well as its group value and setting within the square.

Charlemont Square was laid out under the direction of John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg who purchased a derelict mill at Bessbrook in 1845 and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson effectively founded the village of Bessbrook, having been influenced in his planning by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. The origins of the settlement are older: in 1761 a Mr John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green here, and the place — originally known simply as "The Green" — was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the time of the first Ordnance Survey in the 1830s, few buildings had been erected; the only significant structures shown were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

Richardson developed Bessbrook as a social experiment grounded in his Quaker beliefs and a conviction, in his own words, that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town." He began by laying out Fountain Street in the 1840s. The village became famous as a settlement without the "Three P's" — no Public House, no Pawn Shop, and therefore no need for Police — with Richardson instead providing recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops in the square, and distributions of milk, tea, and cocoa to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to preserve this arrangement in the 1870s and, to this day, there is no public house in Bessbrook. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century. Richardson provided his workers with houses possessing between three and five rooms, each with a yard of about one eighth of an acre. Tenants were required to sign agreements stipulating conditions around keeping fowl and pigs (permitted in a designated sty and fowl-run within the garden, but not in the living quarters or yard), and were also bound to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

The square was built to accommodate the influx of workers arising from the boom in the local linen industry during the American Civil War (1861–65), when disruption to American cotton supplies greatly increased demand for linen. Richardson enlarged his factory and workforce considerably during this period. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making Richardson the principal employer and landowner 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. The architect of the housing is not known 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 during the 1860s, though his role may have been confined to the expansion of the mill buildings. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. Charlemont Square was not shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but Griffith's Valuation of 1862 recorded that Charlemont Square West — captioned "new row" — had been completed though remained unoccupied. The remaining sides of the square were completed and occupied by at least 1866, according to the Annual Revisions.

No. 27 Charlemont Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr William Kerr, valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades but the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan shows the building in its current layout, with a tennis ground depicted within the central green. The 1911 Census records the house as occupied by Robert Hill, employed as an iron turner by the Bessbrook Spinning Company, describing it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. By 1949, under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the Cochrane family had come into possession of the property and remained there until at least the 1970s.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the housing at Charlemont Square until the 1960s, when a post-war downturn in the local textile market prompted the sale of properties. The majority of houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, in around 1970, including No. 27, which was valued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. During the Second World War, the mill workers had been engaged in supplying cloth for military uniforms.

No. 27 Charlemont Square East was listed in 1981. Bessbrook was designated a Conservation Area in 1983 in recognition of its historical significance as a planned mill village and its distinct form and character. 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 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 across the world. Bessbrook is accordingly regarded as internationally significant as an early planned mill village.

An extensive renovation was carried out at No. 27 in around 1980, including repointing of the stone facade and the installation of the cast iron rainwater goods. The current sliding sash window frames were added in 1999. At the time of the second survey the property continued to be used as a private dwelling, retaining its original Victorian character despite the addition of the single-storey flat-roof extension to the rear.