The Market House

The Market House, dated 1902, was designed by WJ Tamlyn and built in Minehead. The building is constructed of coursed red sandstone and freestone, with banding to the ground floor and central gable, and has a tarred roof with decorative stacks to the gable ends. It is a T-shaped building, incorporating a council room and a surveyor’s office above a market hall. The architectural style is Free Style, largely influenced by Northern Renaissance designs.

The building is two storeys high and has a symmetrical five-window front. A central, diagonally-set wooden cupola features a clock and weathervane. A cartouche dated 1902 sits above a truncated gable, containing a semicircular-arched opening. This is flanked by tall, diagonally-set finials and a balustraded parapet. The central first-floor window has square lights of small panes to the top, curved sides, and a single semicircular-arched central pane. It is flanked by small semicircular-arched windows below the finials, and freestone dressings to triple-arched windows at the sides, all with small panes. The ground floor has steps leading to glazed doors installed around 1970, set within a semicircular arch and contained within a balustraded porch with a broken pediment and free-standing columns. The porch is flanked by bull's eye windows at capital level. Wide, rusticated and banded semicircular arched entrances to the market are located at the sides of the building. The windows flanking the porch have glazing installed around 1970. A clerestory illuminates the market hall at the rear, which also has a large semicircular-arched window with small panes to its rear gable end, alongside more recent additions from the 20th century.

Inside, the market hall has a raised glazed clerestory and metal ties to the rafters. The rear of the office block features a two-light oriel window with a hipped roof on the first floor, flanked by wide semicircular brick arches with keystones that rest on rounded brick piers with moulded caps. The rear windows are similar to those on the front. The floor is of stone flags.

The market was established in 1461 and originally held around the old market cross on approximately its present site in Market House Lane. The previous building on the site was destroyed by fire in 1791.