The rear elevation of Bessie Surtees House, seen from the north at an elevated vantage,...

The rear elevation of Bessie Surtees House consists of a three storey timber-framed building with brick herringbone pattern and two gables, and a pair of octagonal brick stacks on the right side. Beyond this first layer is the main body of the five-storey pair of houses, now united. To the right is a timber-framed gable with small window, and to the left is the steeply-pitched roof of no. 41. In the background is the low octagonal turret with domed roof, clock and weathervane of the Guildhall, and further left is the New Tyne Bridge, a road bridge erected 1925-28. At the time of its construction, this bridge was the largest single-span bridge on Britain.