8 Market Place and 1a Mealhouse Brow

Image: © Gerald England Taken: 3 May 2014

A listed building. It is a late 18th or early 19th century house incorporating a 19th century shop front and reusing timbers of medieval or 17th century origin. The building is approached by a flight of stone steps. A low frontage wall with a cast-iron lamp standard is the parapet of 1a Mealhouse Brow, which is on a lower level owing to the slope of the land. Three storeys to the Market Place, of brick in Flemish bond, with a bracketed eaves cornice and restored sash windows. The windows have repaired stone lintels and original stone sills. A facsimile rainwater head has the date 1743, the original perhaps salvaged from another building or from an earlier building on the site. The shop front is bowed and has terracotta foliated brackets supporting a cornice on each side. The rear wall of the building incorporates timbers with mortices and peg holes. 1a Mealhouse Brow consists of a single-storey range towards the Market Place and the adjacent basement and lower basement of No. 8 Market Place. The upper rooms of this part were used for meetings of the town's manorial court leet, and incorporates two small chambers possibly used as lock-ups, The lower basement incorporates two separate chambers used for confinement until 1790 when a new prison was built. The second-storey wall has ghost advertising (partially obscured) which relates to its past use as Ladies and Gents Tailors. In 2010 it was a coffee shop Image after which has been occupied by the "Vintage Style Agency" and the "Teenage Market" but presently it is again empty. 1a Mealhouse Brow, a.k.a. the "Stockport Dungeon" Image is occasionally open for visits by the Stockport Heritage Trust.

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