No. 16-16A Market Place, Incorporating Remains Of St Mary'S Church

No. 16-16A Market Place, Hexham

This mid-19th-century town house incorporates significant surviving remains of St Mary's Church, a 13th-century parish church. The building occupies the south side of Market Place in Hexham.

The house itself is constructed of red brick with ashlar dressings and a slate roof finished with terracotta ridge tiles and finial. The north elevation, facing Market Place, comprises two bays and four storeys with a bracketed eaves cornice and prominent kneelers. A tall, stepped chimney rises to the left gable. The left bay contains four full floors while the right bay has three floors above a ground floor passage, with a staircase set against the passage wall. Moulded bands mark the first and second floor levels, and quoins appear to the left side and upper right side. The ground floor features a 20th-century shop front with a passage opening to the right. The first and second floor windows are 2-over-2 rectangular sashes set within pointed arched moulded surrounds incorporating circular floral and leaf motifs. Third floor windows are similar but set within surrounds with chevron decoration to the lintels.

The south elevation displays the most significant medieval fabric. At the right is part of a two-centred arch of two chamfered orders, infilled with small squared sandstone and containing an inserted 13th-century lancet window, now blocked. Immediately to the left stands a pier with a moulded octagonal capital displaying a ring moulding at the neck and a deep hollow to the abacus. To the left of this pier is part of the right side of a second identical arch, also blocked, which now supports a later passage opening carrying the upper floors of the house. Within the interior staircase, the northern face of the eastern half of one arch and its apex are exposed, providing further evidence of the medieval church structure.

St Mary's Church was the parish church of Hexham in the Middle Ages. It was constructed in the 13th century and succeeded an earlier Saxon church possibly occupying the same site, built by Bishop Wilfred. The date of its abandonment is unclear, though a reference from 1634 indicates it was already a roofless shell by that time. It was probably abandoned after the Reformation around 1540, when the former abbey church became available for parish use. As the medieval church fell into decay, parts of its structure, including the nave's north arcade, were incorporated into houses lining the market place. The surviving arches, piers, and lancet window visible in the rear wall of No. 16-16A represent bays 2 and 3 of the original church nave.

The building holds group value within Hexham's historic market place, which occupies a site of considerable antiquity and contains an important cluster of listed buildings, with the priory church of St Andrew forming the west side.