7, COWBRIDGE (See details for further address information)

Building at 7 Cowbridge, Hertford

A complex of timber-framed buildings now converted to motor cycle retail showrooms, service area, stores and offices. The site incorporates the original No. 7 Cowbridge (dating from the 17th century), former Nos. 2 and 4 Dimsdale Street (15th century), and former Nos. 6 and 8 Dimsdale Street (18th century), with alterations carried out throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The buildings are timber-framed with plaster, pebbledash and colourwash finishes, and retain old tile roofs.

Exterior

No. 7 Cowbridge presents two storeys with attics. The building originally followed a lobby entry plan with a large two-bay room at the front to the left. A jettied gable faces the street with deep eaves cornice and two three-light casement dormers with plastered cheeks. A moulded cornice and hipped tiled roofs occupy the left-hand (east) side. A central red brick chimneystack with three octagonal shafts above a brick base with bands (restored in the 1970s) rises from the roof. The Cowbridge frontage contains one nearly flush-set 16-pane sash window on the first floor and one flush-set three-light casement in the attic gable. An early 20th-century shopfront occupies the ground floor, featuring colourwashed brick piers, a continuous fascia with cut profiled consoles at the ends, and a later three-light timber-framed display window. The Dimsdale Street (east) frontage has one three-light casement at the left and one flush-set 16-pane sash window at the right on the first floor. The ground floor contains a 20th-century glazed door at the right within the lengthened void of a former window, and a 20th-century four-light timber-framed display window at the left.

Former Nos. 2 and 4 Dimsdale Street feature a gabled roof facing the Dimsdale Street (east) frontage, with a gable projecting forward. The blank space above a 20th-century five-light timber-framed display window on the ground floor, and a 20th-century two-light casement window on the return (north) flank at first-floor level, characterise this section. Former Nos. 6 and 8 Dimsdale Street have an old tiled roof, with a yellow brick stack and external chimney breast at the left and a red brick stack at the right above the party wall with former No. 2. Two two-light timber casements occupy the first floor, with 20th-century display windows and a glazed door in voids on the ground floor.

The right-hand flank (west) elevation shows a projecting gable of former No. 2 Dimsdale Street at the rear. This gable was truncated around 1890 due to redevelopment of the adjoining site for the Cowbridge Halls, and the gable end was subsequently rebuilt in yellow gault brick.

Interior

The front ground floor showroom of No. 7 contains a rebuilt segmentally-arched (originally four-centred arched) red brick fireplace with chamfered cheeks and intrados, and a heavy timber bressumer above. A dogleg plan staircase features a newel with multi-faced rhomboid cap on an inverted square urn, moulded handrail, and some bold column-on-urn balusters with closed strings. A two-light landing window with ovolo mouldings is present. Exposed beams display chamfer and tongue stops. The attics partly oversail above former Nos. 2 and 4 Dimsdale Street. The roof exhibits peg-jointed purlin and rafter construction.

Former Nos. 2 and 4 Dimsdale Street are now opened out into No. 7 Cowbridge. The ground floor has been remodelled internally, though the pattern of beams indicates a three-bay structure at right angles to the rear of No. 7. The first floor retains original studwork in the external wall, with several studs removed to form an openwork screen with access from the first floor of No. 7; no separate staircase now survives within No. 2. Mortices in the wall plate indicate positions of diamond-section window mullions. The exposed two-bay braced tie-beam and crown post roof structure dates to the late 15th century, featuring cambered tie beams and square-section unmoulded crown posts with fore and aft curved bracing. There is no evidence of smoke blackening, suggesting the building may have been unheated in its original form. The third bay rearwards from Dimsdale Street appears to be 17th century with no evidence for further prolongation of the crown post structure; it has a truncated wooden purlin. Some evidence of filled mortices in the soffit of the tie beam exists. An inserted chimneystack with a fireplace arch at first-floor level occupies the left side of the front on the south face.

The interior of former Nos. 6 and 8 Dimsdale Street has been remodelled and opened out on the ground floor with access to a modern workshop at the rear. Evidence of a smoke-hood survives behind a large chimneystack shared with former Nos. 2 and 4. A ceiling inserted above the tie beams on the first floor indicates earlier subdivision into three tenements of one bay each. There is no access to the roof. A basement beneath No. 7 contains an arched vault extending through to the main cellar beneath the front room, with brick-lined walls.