The Golden Key

The Golden Key is a house and shop located at 15 Market Street, built around 1890 in a free Jacobean style. The building is constructed of brick, featuring a front with applied timber framing and plaster infill. It has a tiled roof and brick chimney stacks, standing three storeys tall with a total of ten windows across the front.

The second floor is distinguished by three gables that have dentilled bargeboards and pendants, with pilasters between the gables that support carved grotesque atlantes. The applied framing displays patterns of close-studding diagonal braces and arcading. There are three four-light mullioned and transomed casement windows with leaded lights, and a moulded bressumer supported by brackets.

On the first floor, the building features brick rusticated end piers adorned with grotesque masks, while the rest of the façade is plastered and divided into five bays by pilasters topped with grotesque atlantes. Each bay contains two round-headed casement windows with leaded lights, creating a continuous arcade across the entire width of the floor. Below the windows, there is decorative splat balustrading, and a moulded and dentilled cornice crowns the ground floor.

The ground floor is marked by end brick fluted Ionic pilasters, an early 20th-century shopfront with two columns featuring Ionic capitals, and a shop sign depicting a large key painted in gold.