Details
HERTFORD
TL3212NE FORE STREET
817-1/17/61 (North side)
10/02/50 Nos.3-11 (Odd)
GV II*
Includes: Nos.1 AND 2 MARKET PLACE.
Tenements, with ground floor shops, upper floors now part
offices and part flats; one building with Nos 1 and 2 Market
Place. Mid C17 (c1662) altered C18 and C19, restored 1940 and
1989-90. Timber-framed, plastered and pargeted, old tiled
double roof above moulded cornice, and broad overhanging
eaves, with hipped end facing Market Place. Square brick
chimneystacks, some with long orange clay pots.
EXTERIOR: range of 5 tenements on each upper floors, entered
from lobbies on stair landings, located centrally between
chimneystacks; 3 storeys and attics. First floor facing Fore
Street has 9 flush-set 12-pane sash windows with architrave
surrounds and cornice heads, grouped 2:4 left to centre and
1:1:1 at right. Second-floor windows with generally similar
spacing, 2 sashes at left, two 3-light wood casements with
leaded glazing of metal opening lights, and blocked window
between, at centre, and three 3-light wood casements with
glazing bars at right. First floor facing Market Place has
flush-set 16-pane sash window at left and a recessed 16-pane
sash at right; second floor with 3-light wood casements with
glazing bars left and right and blocked 2-light window in
centre.
Except for No.3 Fore Street which is plain plastered, the Fore
Street and Market Place elevations are pargeted on upper
floors, with modelled foliated scrollwork, cartouches and
panels of shell pattern. Ground floor has continuous
shopfronts: that to No.3 Fore Street double fronted and of
early C19 date, with small paned windows, panelled
stallrisers, recessed entrance,and pilasters as outer surround
with cornice above fascia. A 6-panelled door at right gives
entry to alleyway leading to stair access to flats above.
No.5 has recessed double fronted early C19 shopfront comprised
of oriel bow windows with glazing bars, supported on brackets,
and a recessed entrance with half glazed doors and blind
box/cornice above.
No.7 has C2 small-paned bow window shopfront. Nos 9 and 11,
with return to Market Place, has C20 timber shopfront
approximately reproducing the previous late C19 shopfronts,
but with deeper fascia, cornice with console supports.
INTERIOR: ground floor of Nos 9 & 11 and 1 & 2 Market Place
opened out into single space during late 1980s conversion to
building society offices. However there are some exposed
chamfered beams, particularly in the corner where a heavy
dragon beam, chamfered and stopped with a concave tongue is
visible with part of a mortice for a dragon post. The post at
the first bay line is of C20 date but the beam above has 4 peg
holes which appear to have housed a bracket supporting a jetty
above.
The ground floor is shown in a Rowlandson print c1800 with a
bold coved cornice, with tiled roof above the ground floor
shops, but the corner is not visible and evidence for a jetty
is not conclusive. Beams and some studwork are visible on the
ground floor of No.5, which has a newel stair fronted above
but leading to basement, where there is a beam possibly reset
with mortices for a medieval floor structure, and red brick
walls in an irregular English bond. Upper floors of Nos 9-11
and 1 & 2 Market Place now divided with office suites
accessible through ground floor building society offices.
Newel stairs no longer lead down to ground floor.
Sashes of first-floor rooms overlooking Market Place have
quadrant bars, and the corner room has C18 cupboard with 3
raised and fielded panel doors with semicircular heads. The
stair retains a portion of a mid/late C17 baluster with column
splats on moulded plinth bases, bold moulded handrail and
square newel post with stylised urn finial.
Second floors have exposed heavy beams, with dragon beams at
corner of block and at end of Market Place frontage, also wall
plates and storey plates, together with framing around windows
and some primary bracing; main beams chamfered with butt stops
- no tongues on south side of building; some C19 cast-iron
firegrates.
Attics within roof space with some exposed principal rafters,
reset battened plank doors, fireplaces with timber bressumers,
plastered heads and cheeks. Double roof of 'M' configuration
concealed by hipped end facing Market Place, structure of
heavy rafters and butt purlins.
HISTORICAL NOTE: this range of substantial mid C17 urban
tenements is of a scale rare in Hertfordshire. Although the
local historian HC Andrews linked the buildings with residency
constructed for court officials during late C16 outbursts of
plague, when the court and parliament was removed to Hertford,
there is little architectural evidence for a structure earlier
than mid C17, although a number of earlier timbers are
visible.
The construction has recently been identified with an entry in
the Hearth Tax returns for Michaelmas 1662, when John Holywell
paid for 11 hearths in his own house and 36 in five houses
untenanted.
(Forrester H: Timber-framed buildings in Hertford and Ware:
Hitchin: 1964-: 19-21; Hertfordshire Countryside: Moodey G:
Old buildings in the County Town: Letchworth: 1946-1973: 47;
The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Hertfordshire:
Harmondsworth: 1977-: 189; Smith JT: English Houses 1200-1800:
The Hertfordshire Evidence: London: 1992-: 159-60, 162, 164;
Smith JT: Hertfordshire Houses: Selective Inventory: London:
1993-: 84; Green L: Hertford's Past in pictures: Ware: 1993-:
110; Page FM: History of Hertford: Hertford: 1993-: 64-67).
Listing NGR: TL3264312569
