12, Market Place

No. 12 Market Place is a shop that was originally a town house, built in the mid-18th century and later refronted and remodeled in the mid to late 19th century. The building features rendered walls, a steeply-pitched scantle slate roof, and a brick end stack. It is oriented parallel to the street and has a two-storey elevation with two first-floor windows above the shop front. The shop front, dating from the mid to late 19th century, includes cast-iron columns that support the first floor, plate-glass windows framed by a cornice, a moulded stall riser, and a right-hand pilaster. There is an overlight above the central glazed door, and an early 19th-century cast-iron Tuscan column, likely reused, supports the left side in front of a through-entry. The first floor features stuccoed quoining and moulded stucco architraves around the plate-glass sash windows. A similar architrave is found on a four-pane casement in the left-hand gable. The rear of the building was re-rendered in the mid-20th century but retains a mid-18th-century two-light wood casement with ovolo-moulded glazing bars.

Inside, the conversion to a shop in the 19th century involved heightening the ground floor and adding some nailed collar trusses. The horizontal-boarded partitioning and doors to the first floor are from the 19th century. The current second floor has a mid-18th-century fireplace on the left, complete with a moulded mantleshelf over an eared architrave. The 18th-century trusses feature lapped and pegged collars, a diagonally-set ridge with a tenoned apex, and trenched purlins of light scantling, along with a moulded soffit on the central tie beam.