Nos 22-28 With Entrance To Yard 30

Nos 22, 24, 26, and 28 Market Place, with the entrance to Yard 30, are shops with the Working Men's Institute above. The building dates from the 17th century and was largely rebuilt around 1760 for Thomas Ashburner as the New Play House. It served as the first Wesleyan Meeting House in Kendal in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The Trustees of the Working Men's Institute purchased it in 1843 and had it re-fronted in 1865 by Thompson & Webster. It was restored in 1979. The exterior features incised stucco with cavetto eaves and a graduated slate roof with a rendered chimney at the east end. The building has three storeys and four bays. There is a recessed, arcaded 20th-century shop front, and stone steps with a wrought-iron handrail lead up to a first-floor glazed wooden lean-to porch over a garage on the left. A panelled door to no 28 opens off the north side of a passage leading to Yard 30, which parallels the recessed shop front on the right. The first floor has three sash windows, and there are four above, all with glazing bars. A rectangular frame between the upper floors carries a large inscription: WORKING MEN'S INSTITUTE.