21 And 23, Market Street

A pair of houses with a shop, located on Market Street in Hatherleigh. The buildings likely date back to the 17th century, and may incorporate some earlier medieval fabric. Significant alterations and extensions were carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. The walls are likely rubble, rendered, with a slate roof. A brick stack is visible at the right gable end, and there is a projecting plastered brick stack at the gable end of the rear left-hand room. A large axial stack of dressed sandstone blocks, with dripmoulds and a moulded dripcourse below a tapering cap, is present, along with a similar stack at the gable end of a rear parallel block behind the right-hand end. The original layout is unclear, but the position of the stacks suggests a three-room plan with a through-passage, a heated wing behind the left-hand end, and a smaller early block at the rear, parallel to the front range, heated by a gable end fireplace. It is believed that the buildings may incorporate fragments from the medieval collegiate buildings associated with the nearby church. Later 19th and 20th-century additions and alterations have obscured much of the original detail. The front of the building has an asymmetrical 4-window arrangement. The first floor has late 19th-century four-pane sash windows. The ground floor includes a 20th-century part-glazed door to the left, a 20th-century shop front to its right, and a 20th-century shop front with double-glazed doors at the right-hand end, sheltered by a porch. A later addition connects the front range to the small rear block, whose gable end adjoins the Churchyard gates. This section has an exposed sandstone rubble wall with arched niches on the ground floor, and one on the first floor. The first-floor niche may contain a medieval carved stone human mask, and a 19th-century stone shield carved with the initials J.S.S. Inside, two 17th-century trusses remain visible in the front range, featuring cranked collars with notched lap joints onto principals and trenched purlins. A simpler 17th-century truss, without a collar, is present in the rear left-hand wing.