The Herbert House

The Herbert House, York

A timber-framed house of mixed dates, now in use as shops and offices. The principal building is an early 17th-century house, probably built around 1614 for John Jacques, a merchant, with a mid-17th-century extension and a mid-16th-century house at the rear. The complex underwent significant restoration and alteration in the late 19th century and again in 1925, when the shopfront, rear house roofing, and other elements were renewed or rebuilt.

The early 17th-century house is timber-framed throughout, with a front of whitewashed plaster and a rear rebuilt in reused orange-red brick in English garden-wall bond. It presents three storeys with attics, a twin-gabled frontage across three bays, and jetted first and second floors with exposed framing. The shopfront features windows of three segment-headed lights with transoms in plain mullions, and a recessed glazed door. To the left, an ogee-arched door with original door furniture and a divided overlight provides access to the upper floors. A passage opening at the right leads to Lady Peckitt's Yard. The first floor contains mullioned and transomed windows of four and five lights, with small two- and three-light windows at each end. The second floor and attic windows are mullioned casements of two or four lights, all fitted with diamond-lattice casements. The jetty bressumers carry carved fascia boards, the gables are finished with carved barge boards and restored or replacement spike finials and drop pendants, and the roof valleys are masked by renewed timber panels carved with grapes and vines. The roof is of pantiles arranged in two parallel ranges, masked at the rear by a ramped-up brick parapet with a brick stack.

The mid-17th-century extension is built of pink-orange brick in English garden-wall bond with lead and pantile roofs. It includes a door with six beaded panels and a semicircular fanlight, set in a reset open-pedimented doorcase with fluted half-column jambs and garlanded frieze blocks, facing the yard to the right.

The mid-16th-century house at the rear is three storeys tall with a front of four unequal bays, jettied upper floors, and exposed framing. The ground floor has a shallow bow window with moulded cornice to the left of paired shop windows of five arcaded lights beneath panelled friezes, all with small-pane glazing. The first and second floors have single or multi-light casements consistent with the Pavement front. The ground floor of this house was rebuilt in pink-orange brick in Flemish bond during restoration, with upper floors of whitewashed plaster and a tiled roof. At the rear, the first floor jetty is incorporated into the side passage of the adjacent Golden Fleece public house.

Interior features include a coffered ceiling to the through passage. In the early 17th-century house, the ground floor has transverse beams carried on cast-iron columns with leaf capitals. The first floor features chamfer-stopped moulded beams and joists throughout. A replacement open string staircase with turned balusters and a heavy, ramped-up moulded handrail on column newels rises to the second floor. The front room is now subdivided by reset 17th-century panelling. A larger room is lined throughout with run-through panelling beneath a fretwork frieze and moulded cornice on carved consoles, with a panelled door in a fluted doorcase with angle roundels. The fire surround is framed in tapered carved pilaster jambs and fretwork frieze, with a massive tripartite overmantel of carved and jewelled panels between squat Corinthian columns and a vine-carved frieze incorporating the Herbert Arms. The roof trusses are carried on sole-pieces. In the mid-16th-century house, the first floor rear room retains plaster-encased beams decorated with pomegranates and foliage. A doorway with a four-centred head, cut in the wallplate, leads to the later building.

Historical Note

The house takes its name from its associations with Sir Thomas Herbert, friend and attendant of Charles I. The Herbert family acquired an earlier house on the site in 1557. In 1639, Charles I was entertained here by the Lord Mayor, Roger Jaques, on which occasion he knighted Thomas Widdrington, Recorder of York and early historian of the city.