8, Foss Street

No. 8 Foss Street is a shop with a house above, likely built between 1830 and 1840, though it may have older origins. The building has undergone some modernization in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It features mixed construction, with stone rubble and a plastered timber-framed front, a stone rubble right end stack, and a slate roof. The layout consists of two rooms deep with a passage on the left side.

The exterior is three storeys high with an attic and has a one-window range. The plaster front is designed to resemble ashlar stonework. The mid to late 19th-century timber shop front has been largely rebuilt in the late 20th century and includes a modern shop window with glazing bars and a recessed doorway to the left that contains a modern glazed door beneath a plain overlight. At each end of the shop front are mid to late 19th-century timber panelled pilasters with large brackets carved in the style of acanthus scroll consoles, supporting a fascia that extends around the base of the first-floor oriel. The oriel is bowed, has a flat roof, and features a timber modillion cornice, now fitted with modern casement windows. The second floor has two modern casements without glazing bars, and there is a timber modillion cornice along the parallel roof, which includes a front gabled dormer window.

Inside, the ground-floor partitions have been removed, and the plaster has been stripped away to reveal 19th-century joisting and stone walls, along with plain fireplaces set under brick segmental arches. The original stick-baluster stair remains intact.

Historically, Foss Street follows the path of a medieval dyke that dammed a tidal creek and included a tidal mill. The mill pool was filled in and developed around 1820-1830, although houses have been built along Foss Street since the 17th century.