Old Stores House and Old Market Square Cottage

Old Stores House and Old Market Square Cottage

This is a two-storey house with attic and high basement, built in red brick laid in Flemish bond with a slate roof and brick end stacks, the right stack being larger. The building stands on a brick and stone plinth and features a coved eaves cornice. It has three bays on its principal frontage.

The front elevation displays cambered-headed cross-windows with iron small-paned glazing and iron opening lights—three to the top floor and one to the ground floor right—each with brick voussoirs and thin sills. A similar window on the ground floor centre was replaced after 1983 by a neo-Georgian doorway reached by a steep flight of eight concrete steps with iron railings, imitating the former shop door access. The doorway itself is a narrow six-panel timber door set in a timber surround with panelled piers and lintel, beneath a radiating-bar fanlight under an open pediment on consoles. To the left stands a 19th-century former shop-window in the form of a large canted timber oriel on brackets, originally containing 1-2-1 plate glass lights but now fitted with small panes. Below this are steps descending to a cambered-headed cellar entry with ledged doors. A blocked cellar opening lies beneath the right window.

A lean-to structure has been added to the left, incorporating a former shop door approached by eight stone steps, the bottom ones curved, with wrought iron railings that curve outward at the foot. The doorway has a ledged door set in a timber doorcase with side piers, fascia and cornice on consoles. The lean-to's right end wall features an early 19th-century fifteen-pane bowed shop window in red brick, set within a casing of pilasters with roundels, fascia and shelf cornice, and retaining a shutter groove. The lean-to continues to the left in stucco (rubble stone visible in old photographs), without windows, and connects to the stuccoed rear wing known as Old Market Square Cottage, which has a brick end stack. This cottage section is double-fronted with one-and-a-half storeys, featuring one eaves-breaking casement pair with sloping roof to the right, above a small casement pair with iron glazing bars; a 20th-century door to the centre; and a 20th-century triple casement to the left, replacing a casement pair shown in old photographs. The cottage's west end wall is of rubble stone with stone coping, and its rear north wall is also of rubble stone.

The rear of the main house displays garden-wall bond brickwork with three cambered-headed cross-windows with iron opening lights above, one to the ground floor left. A French window to the centre and a hipped porch with small-paned glazing open into the rear wing.

The front is laid with stone cobbled setts.

The interior plan centres on a stair hall containing a mid-18th-century staircase with turned balusters of column-on-baluster type and a moulded rail. A single flight leads to the first-floor landing with similar railings. The ground floor comprises a small north-east room with a modern chimneypiece and a 19th-century grate (found at No. 1 opposite); a back north-west room serving as kitchen with a four-panel fielded-panelled door opening to the centre hall; an oak plank door to a south-side single room, opened out presumably when the building functioned as a shop; and a former south-west room with an oak bressumer to the fireplace. The south-east section has a timber lintel on an iron post carrying a broad opening to a 19th-century porch.

The first floor contains four rooms, each with a fielded-panelled four-panel door. A similar but slightly broader staircase ascends to the attic, which features a landing and long heavy purlins to plastered walls flanking the staircase. The cellar door under the first flight of stairs is broad and ledged, of stable-door type, fitted with four large HL hinges.