The Market

BRISTOL

ST5872NE HIGH STREET, Centre 901-1/16/591 (West side) 08/01/59 The Market

GV II*

Market. Entrance 1744-45, by Samuel Glascodine; covered extension 1848-49 by RS Pope, renovated 1883. Limestone ashlar, with glazed roof over nave of market. Axial plan with C19 open plan aisled extension to S facing St Nicholas Street. Mid Georgian style. Entrance from High Street: 2 storeys; 3-window range. A symmetrical front and matching rear, with a central pedimented section set forward containing a semicircular-arched carriageway, impost band, plat band and first-floor sill band, cornice and parapet. Small semicircular-arched doorways each side, with C20 glazing, beneath a Venetian window with Doric pilasters, architraves to 6-pane windows each side, and a well-carved City shield in the tympanum; 2-bay groin-vaulted passage through to the market with octagonal Portland bollards flanking the arch. INTERIOR: 2 sections of covered arcade, the Glass and West Arcades, the N walls formed by The Rummer Public House (qv) and the Exchange (qv); the S walls have ground-floor arcades of semicircular arches with impost band, of 8 windows to the E with blank arcade above containing 6/6-pane sashes, with a right-hand 2-window return. This has C18 shop front with 2 restored bow windows and paired semicircular-arched doorways, beneath wrought-iron canopy and brackets. The W side has 9 arches, matching first-floor arcade with a plain inner arch and cornice. Glazed C19 roof has iron trusses with decorative curves and brackets. Each side is lined with single-storey timber stalls with pilaster strips to a cornice and parapet, with folding doors. C19 South Arcade extension to the S to St Nicholas Street is a single storey; 7-window range. Trapezium-shaped with curved corners, impost band, cornice and parapet raised to the middle, and semicircular-arched openings with keyed moulded archivolts; St Nicholas Street front has a tall central entrance with iron gates, windows each side, and 2 lunettes at each end. Matching 7-window right return and 4-window left return. INTERIOR: square piers to a C20 steel-trussed roof, and wooden stalls. Built following the completion of Wood's Exchange (qv); only the archway is certainly of the original design. Stall numbers are consecutive: Glass Arcade Nos 1, 5, 8, 17 & 20-50; South Arcade Nos 1-22; West Arcade Nos 1-16. (Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 148; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 420; Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bristol: Bath: 1952-: 106).

Listing NGR: ST5888772951