44-48, CLOTH MARKET

44-48 Cloth Market is a shop and restaurant, now functioning as a public house and offices, built in 1869 by R. Fairbairn for Pumphrey and Carrick Watson. The building is constructed of grey brick with ashlar dressings and features a Welsh slate roof with cast iron cresting. It stands three storeys tall with attics and has five bays. The ground floor showcases an original elaborate wooden shop front with colonettes, brackets, and mouldings. The upper floor windows have chamfered jambs, with shouldered lintels on the first floor and segmental lintels on the second floor, except for the slightly projecting central bay, which contains four arcaded round-headed windows. There are large bracketed cornices above the first-floor windows, and the second-floor windows have bracketed sills and label moulds. A prominent eaves cornice is bracketed over the central bay. The roof features five round-headed dormers and has a mansard design, except for the central bay, which has a tall, steeply-pitched hipped roof, also adorned with cast iron crestings.

Inside, the staircase and first-floor coffee rooms were designed in 1897 by Oliver and Leeson in a distinctive version of the Arts and Crafts style. The coffee rooms include slatted seats with brass rails holding parcel racks above, and tapered pilasters frame the doors. Fretwork Moorish-style pendants in the coffee rooms were partly damaged at the time of the survey, as was the fretwork above the door between the rooms, which has an inserted door from around 1983. The first-floor Oak Room was redecorated in 1914.