10 College Square East, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

10 College Square East, Bessbrook, County Armagh

This is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-terrace house built around 1883, forming part of College Square — a formally planned late-Victorian square of 53 mill workers' dwellings arranged around a central green in the village of Bessbrook. The architect is unknown, though the work may be attributable to John Hardy, a civil engineer appointed as company architect to the Bessbrook Spinning Company in 1881. The house is listed alongside 22 similar properties forming the eastern terrace of College Square, and the listing extends to the house and its yard walling.

Architectural Description

The house is of L-plan form, facing southwest, with a single-storey flat-roofed rear return projecting to the northeast. The walls are built in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite (a high-quality local granite), with stepped red brick dressings to the door and window jambs, stone window cills, and square-headed gauged-brick openings to both doors and windows. The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement tiles with roll-top black clay ridge tiles. The eaves are flush, with separate red and buff brick eaves courses and an alternating red and buff brick corbel course above. A rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northwest carries a single terracotta clay pot. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC, with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

Principal (Southwest) Elevation

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the rest of the terrace. A modest paved front yard is enclosed by smooth cement-rendered dwarf walling, with a planked painted timber foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to a two-panelled timber door at the southeast end of the facade; the door has two glazed panels to its upper half and a square-headed fanlight above. A window sits to the northwest side. The fenestration is regular: two first-floor windows align with the two ground-floor openings, all with top-opening uPVC casement windows throughout.

Northeast (Rear) Elevation

Access to the rear is limited. Where visible, the rear yard is enclosed by rock-faced random-coursed stone boundary walling, entered through a planked painted timber door from the rear access route. At ground-floor level on the southeast end of the rear elevation there is a wider window with a replacement concrete cill; a single uPVC casement window with a stone cill sits at first-floor level to the centre. From the northwest end of the rear facade, the single-storey rear return projects into the yard and has a flat felt-covered roof. It is abutted to the northeast by a smaller flat-roofed boiler house. The southeast side of the rear return has a painted flush timber door with a single square glazed section to its upper half, a top-opening timber casement window to its right, and a separate boiler house accessed from the rear yard. Generally, where visible, the rear elevation has a pebbledash finish with a single red brick corbel course to flush eaves, concrete cills, and uPVC casement windows. The rear return also has a pebbledash finish and uPVC rainwater goods.

The building is attached to No. 11 College Square East to the northwest and to No. 9 College Square East to the southeast.

Alterations

The building retains its overall character and proportions despite a number of later replacements: the original natural slate roof has been replaced with fibre cement tiles, the original front door and railings have been replaced, and the original windows and rainwater goods have been replaced with uPVC. These alterations are noted as detracting from the building's architectural interest.

Setting and Group Value

No. 10 forms part of the eastern terrace of College Square, one of three terraces — east, north, and west — arranged around a central area now divided into three sections of lawn. The northwestern section contains a bowling pavilion and green (added in 1911) enclosed by painted hooped metal railings, with established trees at its northwest boundary. A lawn enclosed by hooped metal railings lies to the southeast, and an open children's playground occupies the centre, where three granite monuments stand. 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 this was the last stone cut from Bessbrook quarry. A third monument, recently relocated 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.

Each house along the square is set back from the perimeter road and footpath behind a modest front yard, typically enclosed by dwarf walling topped by hooped metal railings. The eastern terrace is stepped in groups of six dwellings to follow the subtle contours of the site. The western terrace is composed of paired dwellings in a similar style. Rear yards to each dwelling are 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. The front facades of the eastern terrace are nearly uniform, with the village Town Hall (the former Institute building) located to the southeast. The northern terrace is the shortest at twelve houses wide; while similar in style, its houses are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey buildings.

Historical Context

The village of Bessbrook takes its name from John Pollock, who opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site in 1761 and renamed the area — previously known simply as "The Green" — after his wife Elizabeth (Bess) and the nearby Camlough River (Brook). By the time of the first Ordnance Survey in the 1830s, the site remained sparsely built, with little more than Mount Caulfield House and several thread manufactories and bleach mills recorded.

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 and began building housing for his workers nearby. Richardson later wrote that he "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town," and deliberately chose a rural site near Newry with water power, local flax cultivation, and an available workforce. His layout of the village was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Richardson's philanthropic approach — providing good housing, recreational facilities, shops, and distributed provisions of milk, tea, and cocoa — reflected a characteristic Quaker mix of pragmatic and altruistic intent. He is said to have brought the poor, the unqualified, and beggars from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook, hoping to improve their circumstances.

Bessbrook became well known as a village without the "Three P's": Richardson stipulated there would be no public house and no pawnshop, and therefore no need for a police presence. The majority of residents voted to preserve this ordinance in the 1870s, and to this day Bessbrook has no public house; 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. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson used the opportunity to enlarge his factory and workforce considerably. Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson in 1865, making him by the mid-1860s both the principal employer and principal landowner at Bessbrook. Between 1861 and 1871 the village 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 this growth and lies to the west of College Square.

College Square was laid out around 1883 in response to the continued expansion of Richardson's business. The mid-1880s were a period of intense building activity in the village, and Richardson's factory was greatly extended and modernised in 1884–85. The square was named after the Primary School on its west side, erected in 1849. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The Newry Granodiorite used throughout was quarried locally on the former Charlemont Estate; it is a high-quality stone that was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the entrance steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool. The houses along College Square were first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883.

Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs — confined to the garden rather than the yard or family quarters — and an obligation to send children to school until they were old enough for mill work.

No. 10 College Square East was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr David Stewart and was valued at £5 10 shillings, a valuation that remained unchanged until the 1950s. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades. By the time of the 1911 Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by William Clarke, employed as a general labourer at the factory; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) it remained occupied by the Clarke family at the same valuation. During the Second World War, mill workers were engaged in supplying cloth for military uniforms.

The Bessbrook Spinning Company began selling off its housing in the 1960s as the post-war decline in the textile market took hold, foreshadowing the closure of the mill in 1972 (after which the mill building was occupied by the British Army). The majority of houses around College Square were purchased by a Mr George Preston around 1969, including No. 10. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the house was occupied by a Ms Florence Chambers and had risen in value to £8.

No. 10 College Square East was listed in 1981. The Bessbrook Conservation Area was designated in 1983 in recognition of the village's historical significance as a planned mill village. The Conservation Area Guide notes that the carefully planned development of Bessbrook — including the uniform terraces of Charlemont Square and College Square — influenced the design of the English model villages of Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bournville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895), which have in turn directly influenced town and country planning internationally. Bessbrook is considered internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages, begun in the 1840s and contemporary with, or predating, those more widely celebrated English examples.