The Market House

The Market House is a 16th-century timber-frame building, originally plastered and now covered, with a steep gabled roof covered in old red tiles. It is a large two-story house with an attic, featuring a jettied main block and a projecting crosswing to the north with a gable facing the street. The jetty continues around the south corner into Bell Street, featuring a carved corner post supporting a dragon beam. Smaller brackets are found on the moulded bressimer of the crosswing and over the hall range.

The building's plan comprises three units, with evidence of a buttery and pantry at the south end, a two-bay hall, and a two-and-a-half-bay parlour wing extending across the north end of the hall; the parlour wing is shorter at the west, likely containing a stair. A large stack is built into the lower end of the hall, backing onto a cross passage. There is evidence suggesting a large window once existed to the front in the upper bay of the hall. An external lateral stack on the north end serves the parlour and solar. Inspection has revealed smoke blackening in the roof over the hall and service end, with suggestions that the upper bay of the hall was formerly open to the roof.

The south front includes a hipped dormer with a two-light, early 18th-century casement window featuring rectangular leaded glazing. A dripboard is present across the north gable with a 19th-century mullioned and transomed window beneath. Narrow lights with leaded glazing are generally used throughout. Plaster coves line the eaves, and a smaller coved cornice sits under the jetty, which projects over where windows have been removed. An assortment of mullioned windows are found on the first floor, with one on the ground floor near the south end. Mullioned and transomed windows are present on the ground floor of the hall and parlour. A 19th-century door now enters a lobby beside the chimney. A low projecting plinth is visible.

The south gable of Bell Street has a dripboard across the gable eaves and a six-light mullioned window at the center of the first floor, along with a similar window near the corner on the ground floor. A large lateral stack at the rear of the service end did not appear in a drawing by J C Buckler from 1834. This drawing shows a long, two-story range along Bell Street, partly weatherboarded and partly plastered or brick, with an octagonal kiln roof rising from a corbelled base in the center. This range survives as part of the house, featuring steep old tile roofs, slated eaves to the most westerly part, 19th-century mullioned windows, and chimneys with heavy coupled diagonal shafts. The kiln roof has been replaced by a higher plastered section gabled to the street with wide overhanging verges. A three-story, weatherboarded building with a projecting sack hoist once stood beyond the west end of the Bell Street frontage, but was rebuilt as a facsimile between 1980 and 1981. The building is considered a most important medieval house and a key feature of the town centre’s character.