8, Market Place

No. 8, Market Place is an early to mid-17th century town house. It is constructed of Doulting limestone rubble with a plain tile roof, coped verges with finials, and brick stacks set diagonally on stone bases. The building has a T-shaped plan, with its main facade facing south, and extends over two storeys with an attic. It features an irregular four-window range, incorporating two-, three- and four-light stone-mullioned windows with drip moulds. Doorways are set within chamfered stone architraves on each side. Similar mullioned windows are present on the return gable ends, the rear elevation, and the rear wing, again mostly with drip moulds.

The rear elevation includes a 19th-century doorway creating a through-entry, positioned to the left, below a 17th-century window that has been adapted for use as a loft door. The rear wing has a blocked four-centred arch doorway on its left side, and the north gable was rebuilt in the 19th century when the 17th-century wing was truncated.

Internally, the house retains notable 17th-century features, including stop-chamfered spine beams and a collar-truss roof with butt purlins. Winder stairs are located in their original positions to the front of a right axial stack, above a stack at the junction of the main range and rear wing, respectively. A blocked 17th-century fireplace with a chamfered surround is located on the ground floor of the rear wing, while the main range attic has a 17th-century ovolo-moulded fireplace. The right axial stack also has fireplaces with chamfered surrounds to the ground floor left and ovolo-moulded surrounds to the upper floors; the fireplace to the former great chamber on the first floor has sunk spandrels. A 17th-century ovolo-moulded doorframe is situated to the rear of the axial stack on the ground floor. Remaining fragments of two stud partitions with stop-chamfered doorframes are found in the attic.

Remarkably, the interior decorations retain a 17th-century scheme of lines and patterning in black on white. The most extensive area of this decoration is in the tall attic chamber of the south wing, which includes black-painted mouldings, skirtings, and a geometrical design of overlapping circles to the fireplace lintel, with traces of similar work in other fireplaces suggesting further discoveries may occur. These paintings are a rare survival of late 16th/17th-century interior decoration, and are significant due to their association with a substantial town house of the period.