2 Market Place

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 20 June 2023 to amend the name and address, and to reformat the text to current standards

NZ2130 634-1/8/53

BISHOP AUCKLAND MARKET PLACE (South side) No 2

(Formerly listed as No.2 Barclay's Bank)

20/09/72

GV II

Formerly known as: No.7 MARKET PLACE.

Shown on OS map as 7.

Bank. 1870. By GG Hoskins. For Backhouse & Company. Bright red brick with ashlar dressings and marble nookshafts. Welsh slate roof with brick and ashlar chimneys. Gothic Revival style. Three storeys, five windows. Painted plinth. Ashlar floor bands.

Ground-floor openings have raised segmental heads with polychrome voussoirs and roll-moulded dripstring; enriched arches on impost string; ashlar jambs with marble nookshafts, paired to renewed glass door in fourth bay, with clasping rings and stiff leaf capitals. Elaborate wrought-iron grille in door overlight. Steeply sloping sills on Lombard frieze between jambs. Similar impost strings and ashlar nookshafts to renewed upper windows. First floor has shouldered surrounds and raised square heads, and wrought-iron rails on moulded sills.

Second floor has bracketed moulded sills to smaller windows with segmental heads which rise to top cornice. Roundels in gablets above windows contain carved stone shields except in centre which has date 1870. Flower stops to dripmoulds over roundels; prominent mace finials to footstones and gablet copings. Steeply pitched roof breaks forward between end gables, with spirelets on front angle and three half-hipped dormers between. Gables have high end chimneys with ashlar plinth and cornice.

INTERIOR has entrance screen of three Gothic arches, other original partitions removed. Ceiling heavily moulded in continuous repeating pattern of flowers in linked circles.

(Durham Archaeological Journal: Chapman V: George Gordon

Hoskins JP, FRIBA Part II: Durham: -1988: 68).

Listing NGR: NZ2113830060