The walls of most older buildings of the present town are built of local rubble mudstone, using copious amounts of lime mortar to bed the thin, irregular stones, but this construction is often disguised by applied façades towards the street.

Buildings are commonly altered during their existences, so that what we see of them, as of the countryside itself, is a collage layered in time. Shop fronts, especially projecting ones, are often superficial structures - sometimes shops have been created from the ground floors of buildings that began life as houses. Quirky details often arise from these supersessions and superimpositions of different purposes and periods - if you walk through the town, see if you can spot some.