Bluecoats House

Bluecoats House, Hertford

A house, now converted to offices. Built in the mid-18th century with alterations and extensions added throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed of dark red brick laid to Flemish bond with stone dressings, and has a Welsh-slated mansard roof.

The front elevation faces Bluecoat Avenue and comprises a basement, two storeys and an attic. The original three-bay frontage is distinguished by a later two-bay addition on the north side, marked by a shallow break in the façade. The first floor has five windows: four six-pane sashes arranged 2:3, with a fifth blank window at the right. These sit within shallow reveals beneath shallow red brick rubbed arches with painted stone sills. The ground floor has five recessed openings with stone impost bands and rubbed red brick semicircular arches. Four of these contain twelve-pane sashes with jowled and scalloped blind boxes—two in the northern extension and two on the right. The main entrance is positioned right of centre (originally the left-hand bay). It features a six-panel door with the lower two panels flush and upper four glazed with Arts and Crafts leaded-lights, topped by a leaded fanlight. The door is recessed within an architrave surround and sheltered by an early 19th-century trelliswork porch with a segmental-arched lead roof and scrollwork tympanum. The porch is raised above five stone steps, the lowest having a curtail tread, and a 19th-century wrought-iron handrail. Basement sash windows have rubbed or soldier arches.

The south elevation presents a five-bay façade with pediments at each end flanking a three-bay recessed centre with two window terminations. A projecting 19th-century red brick bay window with four-pane sashes to the sides and two twelve-pane sashes to the front sits on the ground floor, topped with a wood cornice and shallow hipped Welsh-slated roof. A large single-storey 19th-century extension in brown brick with red dressings extends from the centre, featuring two triple-light sash windows, projecting buttresses, and a central red brick chimneystack with oversailing courses and twin earthenware pots. This extension has a flat roof with parapet featuring plat band brick triple-header modillions and stone coping.

The roof contains five lead-cheked dormers with six-pane flush sashes above a cornice with thin modillions. The parapet is stone-coped on the left (north) side, hipped behind a brick pediment with plat band and thin modillions on the right, with brick chimneys to the south.

Interior features have been substantially remodelled from around 1900 during conversion to provide the Headmistress's accommodation. The hall contains an early 20th-century stair with an open well, moulded newel posts topped with urns, column and urn balusters, and a moulded hardwood handrail. The left-hand room retains an early 19th-century reeded plaster cornice and reeded wooden dado rail, along with a mid-19th-century white marble fireplace. Late Georgian mahogany bookcases with slender Gothic tracery in glazed doors stand either side of the chimneybreast. Other ground and first-floor rooms contain Edwardian fireplaces, some with Art Nouveau foliated ornament. The ground floor right-hand room fireplace features a wooden surround with console and dentil cornice supporting a shelf, with an overmantel mirror and dentil cornice above. The cellar stair retains part of a flush-panelled dado. The cellars have been largely reconstructed for modern storage, though the wine cellar survives with its vaulted roof and red brick and slate staging. A brick-lined area at the rear contains an 18th-century wood casement window with later cast-iron glazing bars inserted. An early 19th-century cast-iron external stair stands outside the rear door.

The large rear extension includes a 19th-century hall with a modern inserted first floor featuring a bold coved plaster cornice with banded border. To the south are two small study rooms with diagonally set corner fireplaces with wood surrounds, coved architraves and bold curved break fronts supporting cornices and shelves. The rear (east) room is the former kitchen, retaining two tall multi-pane mullion and transom windows with segmental heads.

The building was originally constructed as the Headmaster's House, immediately south of the original eastern dormitory terrace of Christ's Hospital. When that terrace was demolished around 1900, the house was occupied by the Headmistress. It was extended with classroom space and a hall during the mid-19th century. In 1985, following the school's relocation to Horsham, Sussex, the building was converted to office use.