27 AND 29, RAILWAY STREET

Details

HERTFORD

TL3212NE RAILWAY STREET
817-1/17/186 (North side)
10/01/50 Nos.27 AND 29

GV II

Houses, now shop with offices in rear outshoot. C17 and C18
with C20 alterations. Timber-framed, plastered, with old tiled
roofs above wide eaves soffit.
EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attics. Front block originally had
carriageway on right, with entrance door in flank wall; rear
outshoot 3 bay lobby entry plan. First floor has 2 projecting
casement oriel windows, raised on cut profiled brackets, with
mullion and transom subdivision and leaded glazing, and
moulded cornices immediately below eaves. In centre is
projecting jettied bay with single lower set oriel window, as
described above. First floor with plate glass display windows
and canted fascias across bressumer, recessed glazed shop door
at left of right-hand shopfront. Front has two C20 casement
box dormer at left. 2 gabled casement dormers with
reproduction lead-light glazing on main (east) elevation of
rear outshoot. Square brick chimneystack to left of frontage
building.
Rear has single storey colourwashed brick lean-to with Welsh
slated roof. Long rear outshoot virtually forms a separate
building, now designated 'Elizabethan House'. First floor has
2 mullion and transom casement windows with opening lights
with wood glazing bars, and reproduction leaded glazing
elsewhere. Ground floor recessed below jetty has battened door
at left with moulded architraves under flat canopy in line
with jetty door, with 3 C20-light wood casement with glazing
bars at right.
INTERIOR: ground floor left-hand room, east wall, has a
central painted oak Tuscan column, standing on a tall base and
with curved bracing above covered by weatherboarding indicated
an arcaded ground floor, with a carriageway through to the
rear. The entrance door to the central staircase bay is in the
inner wall to the carriageway; staircase hall with moulded
wood cornice, and fragment of architrave indicating doorway,
now opened out, with left-hand (west) room; rear ground floor
room with moulded cornice. Open string stair with nosed treads
and carved foliated brackets, newels with 4 barley-sugar
twist-on-bobbin balusters, curved curtail tread at foot,
balusters of vase:column:vase pattern, with ramped moulded
handrail and matching dado rail. The lower flights appear to
have been altered in c1900.


First-floor rooms have bold moulded wood cornices, and
staircases with bolection moulded surrounds; rear room over
carriageway converted to kitchen and bathroom in 1920s. 2
attics, left and right of central stair roofed at collar level
and have exposed purlins. Tight staircase access to cellar has
loading doors beneath first floor jettied landing. The cellar
is part brick floored, large fireplace with timber bressumer
indicating original position of kitchen.
Interior of rear outshoot much altered; newel stair with
barley-sugar twist balusters, recent exposure of C17 framing
with primary bracing; ground floor right-hand (north) room
retains C17 panelling.
HISTORICAL NOTE: although small in size this was evidently a
building of some status as indicated by the surviving joinery,
and by a series of late C17 panels with early C18 paintings
removed from the building c1900 and now in Hertford Museum.
The panels have classical subjects: Diana, Mars, Venus and
Cupid; Flora and Pomona; Venus and Cupid; Mars; Ceres; the
Judgement of Paris; and still lives.
(Hope Bagenal: The Georgian and Post Georgian Buildings of
Hertford: 1929-: 8; Smith JT: Hertfordshire Houses: Selective
Inventory: London: 1993-: 86).


Listing NGR: TL3272512691

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

461469

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Bagenal, H, The Georgian and Post Georgian Buildings of Hertford, (1929), 8
Smith, J T, Hertfordshire Houses Selective Inventory, (1993), 86

End of official list entry

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