8, Westgate Street

No. 8 Westgate Street is a shop and dwelling that has been converted into offices. It is part of a group of office suites linked with Nos 6 and 10 Westgate Street. The building dates from the early 19th century, but it incorporates an early 16th-century structure in its rear wing, with later alterations made in the 19th and 20th centuries. The exterior is constructed of brick, with the front faced in ashlar, and features timber-framing in the rear wing. The roof is slate, with artificial slate used on the rear, and there are brick stacks.

The building has four storeys and a cellar, while the rear wing has two storeys and an attic. The front of the building has been remodelled on the ground floor in the mid-20th century, featuring a large window flanked by doorways leading to an office and a lobby entrance for the upper floors. These elements are framed by stone pilasters and an entablature that continues across the front of No. 6 Westgate Street. The upper floors display a progressive reduction in the height of each storey and its windows, with continuous projecting bands at the sill levels and a crowning cornice with a blocking course. Each floor has three sash windows with slender glazing bars, arranged in moulded stone architraves.

Inside, the ground floor has been altered and refitted in the 20th century. From the first to the third floors, there is an open well cantilevered stone staircase with a decorative cast-iron balustrade and a reglazed skylight above. Some rooms on the upper floors in the front block retain early 19th-century cornices and joinery. The rear wing has been relined, but in the attic office suite, the lower parts of the timber trusses from an originally open 16th-century timber roof of five bays are exposed. These trusses feature slightly cambered and chamfered collar ties, with some timbers showing signs of reuse.

Historically, the rear wing may be part of a house built around 1530 for Thomas Payne, which included the rear wing of No. 6 Westgate Street.