20, Market Square

This is a house, originally a house and bakery, dating to the 16th century, with extensions and alterations from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The walls are timber frame with rubble stonework, rendered and finished to look like ashlar on the front. Roofs are covered with stone slabs, diminishing courses of local slates, and Welsh slate, with red brick stacks.

The original timber-framed building is four bays wide. The two eastern bays were originally open to the roof at first-floor level; the remaining bays have an original half-storey. A stone block to the west is three storeys high and includes a vaulted basement, possibly medieval, with one room on each floor. A rear addition dating to the late 17th or early 18th century forms an L-shape with the timber-framed block. A former bakery adjoins the building to the west.

The front elevation follows the curve of the street and is in three parts. The bakery section to the left has two irregular casement windows and a first-floor loading door. The central block has a sash window to the ground and first floors – these windows have projecting sills and decorative flat voussoirs above the openings – and a slit window to the basement. The main house section has three sash windows to the first floor, a doorway with a half-glazed four-panel door and overlight, two sash windows, and a projecting shopfront with a central door to the right. There are two ridge stacks.

Inside, much of the original timber framing is exposed, along with some early 18th-century joinery.