8 Charlemont Square West, Bessbrook, Co. Armagh, BT35 7AF

8 Charlemont Square West is a modest two-storey, two-bay mid-Victorian mid-terrace house, built around 1862 to designs by an unknown architect. It forms part of Charlemont Square West, which together with the east and north terraces makes up a formally planned square of 66 buildings arranged around a central green. The listing covers the house itself, together with its gate, railings, and yard walling.

Architectural Description

The building is of L-plan form, facing northeast, with a single-storey flat-roofed rear return added at a later date. The walls are built in random-coursed, rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite — a high-quality granite quarried on the former Charlemont Estate — with painted red brick dressings throughout. Door and window openings have painted stone cills and stepped red brick surrounds, with gauged-brick cambered heads, though these are generally now squared off with painted smooth cement render. The roof is pitched and covered in fibre cement slates, with angled black clay ridge tiles. There is a rectangular-section red brick chimney stack to the northwest with two terracotta pots. The eaves are flush, with a red brick corbel course. Rainwater goods are generally uPVC with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes, though the front northeast facade retains metal half-round guttering.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical and sits flush with the main terrace. At ground-floor level there is a window opening to the northwest and a four-panelled painted timber door to the southeast. The door has two glazed panels to the upper half, incorporating some coloured lozenge-shaped panes of leaded glass, with black iron door furniture and a square-headed fanlight above. The upper floor has two windows in line with the ground-floor openings. All windows are double-hung 1-over-1 sliding timber sash windows with window horns and exposed sash boxes. The current sliding sash window frames were installed in 1999.

A modest paved front yard is enclosed by a red brick dwarf wall topped by plain hooped painted metal railings, with a matching foot gate hung on slim posts to the southeast. A concrete path leads from the gate to the front door.

To the northwest the building is attached to No. 9 Charlemont Square West, and to the southeast it is attached to No. 7 Charlemont Square West. The rear elevation, where visible, consists of a concrete yard enclosed by random-coursed rock-faced stone boundary walling, accessed through a sheeted painted timber door from the rear access route. There is a single double-hung sliding timber sash window at first-floor level on the rear facade. The single-storey rear return projecting to the southwest has a smooth cement render finish and a flat felt-covered roof.

Setting

No. 8 forms part of a planned arrangement of 66 mill workers' dwellings and shops comprising 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 by hooped metal railings. The east and west terraces are stepped in groups of two dwellings to respect 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 door opening onto a wide rear access route. Rear facades are much altered with various extensions of different shapes and sizes. Front facades are nearly uniform along the east and west terraces, with five larger buildings at the southeast end of Charlemont Square East and one at the southeast end of Charlemont Square West having traditional shop fronts at ground-floor level with dwellings above. The northern terrace is the shortest at only eight houses wide, though these are distinctly larger two-and-a-half-storey paired buildings. The central green is now laid to lawn, 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.

Historical Context

Bessbrook's origins date to 1761 when a Mr. John Pollock opened the first woollen mill and bleach green on the site. The location was then simply known as "The Green" but was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. By the 1830s, the first edition Ordnance Survey map records only a handful of significant structures: 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 and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), purchased one of the derelict mills and began building housing for his factory workers nearby. Richardson later explained that he "had a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and chose the Bessbrook site for its water power, surrounding rural population, and the local cultivation of flax. The 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 outlook led him to bring the poor and unemployed from the surrounding countryside to work and live at Bessbrook, hoping to improve their conditions and habits. The village became known for the absence of the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for a police station — a principle that the majority of the population voted to preserve in the 1870s and which holds to this day. In their place, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea, and cocoa distributed to his mill workers.

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry experienced a significant boom during the American Civil War (1861–65), when access to American cotton was cut off, and Richardson greatly enlarged his factory and workforce. In 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him both the main employer and principal landowner at Bessbrook.

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, and the number of houses rose from 73 to 296. The terraces were built by masons and joiners employed directly by the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The architect of the houses is not known with certainty; C. E. B. Brett has suggested 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 involvement may have been limited to the expansion of the mill buildings. The Newry Granodiorite used throughout is of notably high quality: granite from the Bessbrook quarry was also used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

The square was not yet shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, but construction had commenced by 1862. Griffith's Valuation of that year noted Charlemont Square West — captioned "new row" — as the only completed side of the square, though all 26 buildings along it remained unoccupied at that point. The remainder of the square was completed and occupied by at least 1866.

Each house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required under their lease to observe a number of conditions, including stipulations about the keeping of fowl and pigs (permitted only in a garden pig-sty or fowl-run, not in the yard or the family quarters), and an obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough for mill work. Each property had a garden or yard of approximately one-eighth of an acre.

No. 8 Charlemont Square West was built around 1862. Annual Revisions record that it was initially let by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Robert Atkinson and was valued at £5 and 10 shillings. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, though the valuation remained unaltered until the 1950s. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1906 depicts the building in its current layout. The Census of Ireland records that in 1911 the house was occupied by William Lyness, one of the village's few police constables; 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) the house was occupied by the Cherry family, who remained at the address until at least the 1970s.

During the 20th century the mill at Bessbrook continued to expand and gain international recognition, with workers supplying cloth for military uniforms during the Second World War. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of the housing until the 1960s, when the dwellings along Charlemont Square began to be sold to private individuals and firms. The majority of the houses along the square were purchased by C. R. Morrow, a local car and farm machinery dealer, around 1970. No. 8 was purchased outright by C. R. Morrow in 1970 and was revalued at £7 and 10 shillings under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). The sale of the company's housing stock was necessitated by the post-war downturn in the local textile market, which foreshadowed the closure of the mill in 1972.

No. 8 Charlemont Square West 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 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 have directly influenced town and country planning all over the world. Bessbrook's development predates both Port Sunlight and Bourneville, making it internationally significant as one of the earliest planned mill villages of its kind.