10, Market Place

This is a late 16th-century house with a shop, now operating as a hotel, situated on the south side of Market Place in Wells. It has undergone several alterations and extensions through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The building is likely timber-framed in part, with a rendered exterior, a hipped clay pantiled roof, and brick chimney stacks.

The house is a long, narrow range set gable-end to the street, with a return frontage to the Market Place to the east. It has been extended to the rear and refronted in the early 19th century, with a further storey added at that time. The main facade has three storeys and a basement, with a single bay. The shop front across the ground floor features a two-light display window and a six-panel door to the right, flanked by panelled pilasters and a cornice resting on end brackets. Upper floors have sixteen-pane sash windows set within plain openings. The east-facing flank has an offset above first-floor level, with a door towards its south end, and modern casement windows above at second-floor level.

A single-bay rear extension to the south has a casement window to the ground floor and a four-pane sash window to the first floor. Running along most of the east side is a cast-iron verandah with a glass roof, originally a bus shelter. Above the verandah, at second-floor level, is a three-light small-pane casement. A casement window is located at ground floor level to the left of this, with a four-pane sash window above it on the first floor. The south gable is plain with a single-storey 20th-century extension.

The cellar features a small bressumer fireplace. Inside, a good stick stair with winders rises to a roughly rounded full-height newel. The front room on the first floor has three transverse beams. The roof and upper floor are likely later additions.

Historical records indicate the building was once part of the Crown Hotel and a 1902 photograph reveals the east-facing flank displaying a large display window and lacking the later lean-to structure. The house was originally built in the late 16th century by a canon resident in the Canonical House (The Exchequer) on what was then his garden, the site of the former Town Hall.