22-23 Market Place and 1-8 Plowright Place

Former ironworks and foundry with showrooms and stores, built in 1870 by the local builder Matthias Goggs, converted into a shopping arcade in 1982, with first-floor flats created around 2014.

MATERIALS: the frontage is of yellow brick laid in Flemish bond with yellow brick dressings under a slate-clad roof to the front and pantiles to the rear. The rear range is of uncoursed flint, some unfractured, with red brick fragments in places, and red brick dressings. The roof over the western half is clad in pantiles. (The remaining roof covering is not visible from street level).

PLAN: the main range faces east onto the Market Place and contains a central carriageway leading to the long, rear, south range.

The western-most part of the rear range (9-10 Plowright Place), constructed of red brick, is not included in the listing.

EXTERIOR: the main frontage has two-storeys under a pitched roof with a dentilled eaves cornice and a parapet on the left supported by a brick kneeler. The façade has five window bays and is nearly symmetrical. The central carriageway is defined by pilasters rising to a shaped gable and enclosing an arched two-light casement at first-floor level, with a large decorative fanlight with batwing glazing bars. The metal gates date to the late C20. The carriageway is flanked by pairs of tall three-light windows set in raised surrounds with a keystone, and one-over-one pane sash windows above, in similar surrounds. A stone platband runs across these bays in between the windows. The outer bays have shallow recesses with a moulded stone cornice and stone platband under first-floor sill level. The narrower left bay contains a semicircular arched pedestrian doorway with a brick keystone, leading to the rear. The wider right-hand bay has a C20 shop window display and door. The central carriageway retains two cast-iron columns with classical-style capitals, and is lined with late C20 shop windows. Along the south side of the rear courtyard is a long two-storey range of flint with brick quoins, under a pitched roof with a simple brick eaves cornice. The workshops were housed in this range which retains four former carriage entrances under wide brick arches composed of three rows of headers. These have been infilled with doors and shop windows. Along the ground floor there are eleven wooden windows, mostly with fixed lights, under red brick arches; and the first floor is pierced by twelve wooden casements, mostly in late C20 brick surrounds. The doors and fenestration date to the 1982 conversion.

INTERIOR: this does not retain any historic features or fixtures relating to its former use, having been converted into shop units and flats in the late C20 and early C21 respectively.