3-11, FORE STREET (See details for further address information)

Nos. 3-11 Fore Street with Nos. 1 and 2 Market Place, Hertford

A substantial range of five timber-framed tenements with ground floor shops, originally built around 1662 in the mid-17th century. The upper floors now contain offices and flats. The building was altered during the 18th and 19th centuries, and underwent restoration in 1940 and again in 1989-90.

The exterior displays characteristic mid-17th-century features with a timber frame, plastered and pargeted upper floors, an old tiled double roof above a moulded cornice, and broad overhanging eaves. A hipped end faces Market Place. Square brick chimneystacks with long orange clay pots rise through the structure.

The building rises three storeys with attics above. Entries to upper floor tenements are accessed from lobbies on stair landings located centrally between chimneystacks. On the Fore Street elevation, the first floor has nine flush-set 12-pane sash windows with architrave surrounds and cornice heads, grouped in the arrangement 2:4 left to centre and 1:1:1 at right. The second floor features two sashes at the left, two 3-light wood casements with leaded glazing and metal opening lights at centre, with a blocked window between, and three 3-light wood casements with glazing bars at right. The Market Place elevation shows flush-set 16-pane sash windows at first floor level (recessed at right), and 3-light wood casements with glazing bars at second floor, with a blocked 2-light window in the centre.

The Fore Street and Market Place elevations feature pargetted upper floors with modelled foliated scrollwork, cartouches and panels of shell pattern, except No. 3 Fore Street which is plain plastered.

The ground floor contains continuous shopfronts. No. 3 has a double-fronted early 19th-century shopfront with small-paned windows, panelled stallrisers, recessed entrance and pilasters with a cornice above the fascia; a 6-panelled door at right provides access to an alleyway and stair serving the flats above. No. 5 features a recessed double-fronted early 19th-century shopfront with oriel bow windows on brackets and a recessed entrance with half-glazed doors and blind box cornice. No. 7 has a 20th-century small-paned bow window shopfront. Nos. 9 and 11, returning to Market Place, have a 20th-century timber shopfront approximately reproducing previous late 19th-century shopfronts but with a deeper fascia and cornice with console supports.

Internally, the ground floor of Nos. 9 and 11 and Nos. 1 and 2 Market Place was opened into a single space during the late 1980s conversion to building society offices. Exposed chamfered beams are visible, particularly at a corner where a heavy dragon beam, chamfered and stopped with a concave tongue, can be seen. Part of a mortice for a dragon post survives nearby; a 20th-century post at the first bay line stands beside a beam above that bears four peg holes that appear to have housed a bracket supporting a jetty above. A Rowlandson print from around 1800 depicts the ground floor with a bold coved cornice and tiled roof above the ground floor shops, though evidence for a jetty is not conclusive.

No. 5's ground floor exhibits exposed beams and studwork. A newel stair fronts above but leads down to a basement containing a beam possibly reset with mortices for a medieval floor structure and red brick walls in irregular English bond. The upper floors of Nos. 9-11 and Nos. 1 and 2 Market Place are now subdivided as office suites accessible through the ground floor building society offices; newel stairs no longer lead down to the ground floor.

Sashes of first-floor rooms overlooking Market Place have quadrant bars. The corner room contains an 18th-century cupboard with three raised and fielded panel doors with semicircular heads. The stair retains a portion of a mid to late 17th-century baluster with column splats on moulded plinth bases, a bold moulded handrail and a square newel post with a stylised urn finial.

The second floor displays exposed heavy beams, with dragon beams at the corner of the block and at the end of the Market Place frontage, together with wall plates, storey plates, and framing around windows and some primary bracing. Main beams are chamfered with butt stops, with no tongues on the south side of the building. Some 19th-century cast-iron firegrates are present.

Attics within the roof space contain some exposed principal rafters, reset battened plank doors, and fireplaces with timber bressumers with plastered heads and cheeks. The double roof, of 'M' configuration, is concealed by the hipped end facing Market Place; its structure comprises heavy rafters and butt purlins.

This range represents a rare scale of substantial mid-17th-century urban tenements for Hertfordshire. Local historian H. C. Andrews linked the buildings to residences constructed for court officials during late 16th-century plague outbreaks when the court and parliament relocated to Hertford, though little architectural evidence supports a structure earlier than the mid-17th century, despite the presence of some earlier timbers. The construction has recently been identified with an entry in the Hearth Tax returns for Michaelmas 1662, when John Holywell paid tax for 11 hearths in his own house and 36 hearths in five untenanted houses.