Prince Albert Cottages

Details

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment in 18/06/2018

TL3212NW
817-1/16/50

HERTFORD
COWBRIDGE (South side)
Nos.11A, 11B, 11C and 11D
Prince Albert Cottages

(Formerly listed as Nos.11A, 11B, 11C and 11D, COWBRIDGE)

09/07/71

GV
II
Group of four tenements in single building, built in 1864 for the Labourer's Friendly Society, with C20 alterations. Architect Henry Roberts. Red brick, laid to Flemish Bond, with yellow brick dressings including moulded string courses. Welsh slated low pitched roof concealed at front by low parapet with stone copings. Red brick chimneystacks with projecting breasts left and right, that to left having diagonally set outer shafts above projecting corbel courses, that to right reduced in height to level of corbel courses. Central rear chimneystack, reduced to level of corbel courses. Jacobean Revival style.

EXTERIOR: Two storeys, with truncated Dutch gables above parapet, slightly projecting ends, each with one triple-light casement window with divided glazing to first and ground floors. Recessed centre with shallow Tudor arched opening, with stone extrados. First floor access balcony with a wood railing and stick balusters, and a recessed ground floor with doors to ground floor tenements at left and right, and the external stair to the first floor ahead.

INTERIOR: each tenement originally designed to standard plan, with lobby leading to living room at front, with two bedrooms opening off at rear, central scullery with w.c. at front and large bedroom at rear. The plan could be 'handed' to combine in pairs around the staircase, and repeated on each-floor level.

HISTORICAL NOTE: this block of four tenements was originally built as 'Model Houses for Families, built in connexion with the Great Exhibition of 1851, by Command of His Royal Highness, The Prince Albert'. The Society for the Improvement of the Conditions of the Labouring Classes had commissioned designs for model dwellings from Henry Roberts, and the Exhibit was constructed near the Cavalry Barracks facing the Crystal Palace site in Hyde Park, at Prince Albert's expense. Construction involved the use of hollow brick to eliminate damp, with hollow brick segmentally vaulted first floors and roof, with concrete infilling. After the Exhibition the block was dismantled and re-erected in Kennington Park in 1852. The Hertford MP, Robert Dimsdale, was on the SICLC Committee, and promoted the construction of the Hertford block, in which a pitched roof replaced the flat of the original. Externally the buildings retain much of their original character, albeit with the reduced height of two of the main chimneys. The tenements have been periodically refurbished; the last time during the 1970s.

Listing NGR: TL3236012780

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

461300

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Curl, J S, The Life and Work of Henry Roberts 1803-1876, (1983), 93-108
Pevsner, N, Cherry, B, The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire, (1977), 193
Green, L, Hertfords Past in Pictures, (1993), 35
Hertfordshire Countryside in Hertfordshire Countryside, (1946-1973), 28

End of official list entry

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