7, Market Place

A house with shop, now offices, dating from around 1453 and built as part of the "New Works" commissioned by Bishop Bekynton. The property was modified in the 19th century and again in the late 20th century. It includes No. 4B Cathedral Green at its northern end.

The building is rendered with false ashlar lines scribed on and colourwashed. It has a Welsh slate roof behind a parapet with a coped gable to the west, and a brick chimney stack.

The plan extends through to Cathedral Green, with the main front range flanked by a throughway to the right and the original staircase to its left. A return wing across the rear encloses a long narrow courtyard, partly filled by 20th-century work.

The exterior presents three storeys with a single wide bay. The ground floor has a projecting 19th-century style shop front with stone and rendered stallriser. A 5-light display window with an extra light to the left appears to replace a second doorway, flanked by slim panelled pilasters. To the right is a 6-panel door under a rectangular fanlight, with a very slim fascia featuring cornice mould and a lead flat roof over.

The upper floors are dominated by a wide shallow canted bay window extending the full height to the parapet, incorporating sash windows with exposed boxes—8+16+8 panes to the first floor and 4+8+4 panes to the second floor, each with cornice mouldings above. On the left stands a 15th-century buttress with two offsets, together with a lead rainwater stackhead and downpipe. Traces of the original medieval string course are visible above the second floor. A projecting sign appears at ground floor level towards the right.

The rear range is an 18th-century rebuilding with a 20th-century façade, rendered with a pantile roof. It comprises three storeys and three bays, all with horned 12-pane sashes and a door to the left. The lowest floor sits well below the level of Cathedral Green.

The interior of the ground floor contains two main rooms. The front room features a large chamfered transverse beam with run-out stops. The rear room has a 4-compartment ceiling with moulded beams, an early 3-panel door, and a 19th-century fireplace in the north wall with reeded pilasters and paterae. The through passage has a flagged floor, and the main rear room contains 18th-century cupboard doors. A stone spiral staircase, approached through a wide 4-centred stone arch, has oak treads within a half-cylindrical well; the top landing retains a late 16th or early 17th-century balustrade.

At first-floor level, above the passageway, an embedded chamfered beam rests on three corbels, terminating in a run-out stop at its south end. The second-floor landing features a 2-light fixed wooden casement with stubs of former vertical bars, a small recess, and a 2-panel fielded door.

The roof structure comprises two bays with two ranges of wide chamfered wind-braces and three chamfered and stopped purlins. The western truss retains its heavy arch-braced collar, though the braces and collar have been removed from a second truss. The east wall contains heavy timber-framing. The rear wall of the main range features a stone doorway with a 4-centred arch and an early 8-pane sash with slender lozenge glazing bars.

This building forms part of an outstanding late medieval planned urban group.