46, 48 AND 51, MARKET SQUARE

This substantial town house, now a shop, dates to the early to mid 17th century, with possible earlier elements, and was altered in the late 17th century. It is located on a prominent island site in Bicester Market Square.

The building has a double-depth plan and has been extended to the front and rear. The east front is double-gabled and was built in the late 17th century. It features exposed timber framing and has three renewed cross windows to each of the upper floors, with 20th-century lattice glazing. A simple wooden pallisade rises above a moulded wooden cornice, and a deep jetty, spanning the alleyway to the right and supported by long braces, is present at first floor. To the left is a return to an earlier range, also with renewed cross windows and a 20th-century shop front.

The central section of the south front has a double gable rising above a late 19th and early 20th century shop front and a wide early 18th century five-light window with thick glazing bars. The upper floor fenestration is irregular, featuring a large window likely dating to the late 18th or early 19th century. The westernmost gable has a scalloped bargeboard.

A flat-roofed addition, dating to around 1700, projects below the two original gables on the west front. It has a heavy moulded wooden cornice and old horizontal-sliding sash windows on the first floor. The ground floor includes a 18th-century canted bay window on shaped brackets, two older windows, and a panelled door.

A link at the western end of the building spans the alleyway to the north, incorporating a wooden three-light mullioned-and-transomed window with old leaded glazing, which now partially penetrates into the adjacent building. A jettied bay facing north between the two links retains mid-17th century oriel windows on the first and second floors; the lower window is larger, with decorated angle mullions and a former transom, while the upper window has moulded mullions. At ground floor, a single bracketed post remains exposed, along with two panelled doors and a window built out below the jetty. The gable retains a portion of a scalloped bargeboard.

The interior features stop-chamfered beams, including dragon beams, in the earlier section, along with internal bracketed posts and two-panel doors. A staircase dating to around 1700 has winders, a moulded closed string and handrail, and a few barleytwist-on-vase balusters. A medieval octagonal wooden post with broach stops top and bottom is built into a wall in the cellar.