Summary
Two shops (now combined) with accommodation above, early- to mid-C19 with C20 alterations.
History
Selby as a settlement dates to the Anglo-Saxon period, when it was known as Seletun (old Scandinavian for ‘sallow tree settlement’) and was referred to by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of AD 779. A charter of about 1030 called it Seleby and about 1050 it was Selbi. King Henry I was born in Selby in 1068 and, a year later, Benedict, a French monk from Auxerre, obtained permission from King William to establish an Abbey. The Market Place has existed since the early C14. By the C15, Selby had developed thriving trade links along the East Coast and with the Low Countries. Selby Abbey succumbed to dissolution in 1539, and the core of the building became the parish church in 1618.
Selby’s commercial importance grew dramatically following the opening of the Selby Canal in 1778, becoming a notable inland port; however, after the building of Goole Docks in 1826, it suffered a very rapid decline. The town’s fortunes recovered in 1834, with the opening of the Leeds and Selby Railway, and by the early C20, witnessed a growth in several industries served by the railways and river traffic, including flour milling, malting, oilseed milling and cattle feed production. In 1983, coal production commenced from the Selby Coalfield. Shipbuilding ended ten years later, and coal mining ceased in 2004. Since then, there has been a gradual reduction in the traditional industries, although some remain.
Built close to the Market Cross, adjacent to the junction of Market Place and New Lane, this shop was originally part of a single building that comprised number 17 (The Cricketers’ Arms), and 18 and 19 Market Place. Numbers 18 and 19 once had a shared courtyard to the rear, served by a water pump. The footprint of the building differs slightly in depiction between the 1849 and the 1890 Ordnance Survey town maps, suggesting that it was re-modelled between those dates. Like many other shops, it has been occupied by several businesses over time, including Hepworths Outfitters, the Army and Navy Store and Mackays. The courtyard was infilled by a shop extension sometime after 1963. The building was listed in December 1968 and the entry was amended in November 1980 to reflect the merging of numbers 18 and 19, as number 19 only. By the late 1980s, the current C19-style shopfront had been installed.
Details
Two shops (now combined) with accommodation above, early- to mid-C19 with C20 alterations.
MATERIALS: fair-faced red brick, painted stone and stucco dressings, timber windows, slate roof.
PLAN: corner building with rounded and recessed north-west angle, and rear ranges.
EXTERIOR: prominently sited on the corner of Market Place with New Lane, and of three storeys in Flemish Bond brickwork, with two bays to each street and a recessed and rounded corner bay, all beneath a moulded timber eaves cornice with cast-iron rainwater goods. All windows have painted wedge lintels and stone sills (to the first floor, forming part of a sill band). The north facade has a late-C20 shop front in C19 style, with two windows to each floor above, stacked; these are unhorned 16-pane sashes. The roof is hipped with a prominent brick chimney stack at either end of the ridge.
The corner bay has header-bond brick above the entrance, and a curved window to each floor above (these are 12-pane sash windows, with horns).
The west facade is also of two bays, but asymmetrical, with a window to each floor towards the left of each bay (all unhorned 16-pane sashes). The ground floor has a shopfront only in the left bay; beneath the windows to the right is a doorway with a plain frame and a flat hood on cut brackets, housing a door with six fielded panels and a rectangular fanlight over.
