12, 14 and 16 Cloth Market (White Hart Inn)

Houses, now shops and business premises, formerly the White Hart Inn. Late C16, incorporating some medieval fabric, refronted late C18, with late C19-early C20 shops. Flemish bond brick, colourwashed with moulded stone eaves cornice, refronting timber framing. No.12 remodelled 1924 by Stockwell and Ditchburn. Welsh slate roof with tiled ridge.
Main street front of 3 storeys, 4 bays. In 3rd bay a vehicle entrance to
White Hart yard. 3 small C 19 shop-fronts in other bays. Upper windows replaced sashes under flat gauged brick arches. Old stonework in rear wall.
Rear wing to White Hart yard 2 storeys, 4 bays, irregular. Early Cl9 mock timbered and pebble-dashed facade. Elaborate central doorway flanked by large shop windows with sash windows above; seventeenth-century window. To left the rendered section with a deep plinth has a moulded and 4-centred arched doorway.
INTERIOR: ground floor of bay to left of yard entrance has very heavy ceiling beams. Some interval partitions have timber studding. The whole first floor is one large 4-bay room. Heavy beams divide the bays and between these are close-set joists with trilobe mouldings and elegantly run-out stops. In southern part of rear wall a stone fireplace with massive chamfered lintel and solid jambs corbelled-out in two stages to support the lintel. Jambs are chamfered on shaft to corbels and have small broaches at top and bottom. At north end of room a smaller similar fireplace whose right jamb is damaged and left jamb rebuilt in brick. All these features appear to be late C16 and original. In rear wing which is part of No 16, the first floor ceiling shows similar heavy beams, but no visible joists.

These buildings occupy medieval burgage plots, rare survivals in Newcastle, and retain considerable amounts of early fabric behind later facades. LISTED GRADE 2*