Lombard House

Lombard House

A house, now used as a club, set back within a garden at the head of Bull Plain in Hertford. The building dates from the 15th century, was extended in the early 17th century, and was refronted in the 18th century. It was repaired in the 1980s following a fire.

The structure is timber-framed and plastered above a brick base on the north elevation, while the south front is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond. The roof is tiled and hipped behind a tall parapet with stone coping on the south side.

The plan follows a traditional hall-plan arrangement with two cross wings, a first floor inserted into the original open hall, and the house extended to the rear, with the extension oversailing the river.

The building presents two storeys with attics and a basement. The front elevation facing south displays an irregular seven-bay fenestration that reflects earlier structural subdivisions. The first floor contains two closely spaced tall flush-set twelve-pane sash windows at the left, followed by a shallow break back in the elevation, then two slightly recessed, squatter twelve-pane sashes. A single bay projects forward with one twelve-pane sash, then the elevation breaks back again to accommodate two widely spaced twelve-pane sashes at a lower level. All windows sit beneath rubbed brick segmental arches with flat tops below a projecting plat band, and panelled blind recesses in the parapet above correspond to the spacing of the windows below. The ground floor features similar fenestration with uniform twelve-pane sashes throughout. An isolated segmental arch at the right, with brickwork below indicating a blocked void, survives. The plat band sits immediately above the arches, and a projecting plinth runs below sill level, rendered to the left of the porch. An early 20th-century projecting porch, timber-framed with lattice-glazed sidelights and moulded arcading around the doorway, covers the central bay. The porch has a frieze with consoles and a hipped lead roll roof. An 18th-century brick and weatherboarded, pantile-roofed single-storey lean-to stands at the far right (east).

The left (west) elevation towards the street frontage approaching Folly Bridge features a jettied corner where the brick front meets late 19th-century plastered and pebbledashed flank walls. The first floor contains a mullion and transom window in a partly rebuilt extended chimneybreast, with the remainder of the elevation plastered above brickwork.

The rear (north) elevation rises sheer from the river with a colourwashed brick retaining wall and first floor and attics jettied out. The fenestration is irregular, with the first floor containing four eighteen-pane Yorkshire sashes, three wood casements in central gabled attic bays, a modern three-light casement with glazing bars below the jetty at the left, and small altered ground floor and basement casements to the centre and right.

The roof features three gabled casement dormers at the rear: a low gable at the left, three tall narrow central gables, and a broad gable at the right. Three and two shafted brick chimneystacks with band and oversailing courses (rebuilt in the early 20th century) stand to the rear of the front roof, and a tall red brick stack with band and oversailing course (early 20th-century shaft rebuilt on a 17th-century external chimneybreast of English Bond) is also present.

The interior has been much altered but retains features from the 15th, 17th, and later centuries. The right-hand (east) cross wing is a two-bay structure with a central cambered tie beam exhibiting remains of heavy arch bracing and a partly exposed crown post roof with fore and aft bracing. The first floor was originally jettied but is now underbuilt with an 18th-century brick front. The ground floor has been opened out into a single space and contains a central fireplace on the rear wall. This fireplace features a Mannerist early to mid-17th-century surround with squat Tuscan pilasters whose flutes are bead-filled, planted carved grotesque heads, a shelf with carved elongated egg-and-dart nosing, and an overmantel with three richly carved consoles with cloven feet, fruit swags and griffins' heads, all surrounding square raised and fielded panels with carved, painted and gilded heraldic shields. Some early 17th-century panelling and a fragment of early 18th-century bolection-moulded panelling survive. The former left-hand (west) room contains a restored brick fireplace on the outer (west) wall with a flat four-centred arch having a moulded extrados and jambs. Behind the fireplace in the west wing, a staircase features stick balusters and a simple moulded handrail.

The first floor includes late 17th and early 18th-century panelling and a roll-moulded cornice in the Chauncy Room, which was created by the insertion of an intermediate floor into the former open hall. A mid-17th-century fire surround with Tuscan pilasters exhibiting fielded and raised panels on plinths with raised lozenges stands in this room. Above the fire are two panels with relief-carved foliated pilasters, arches and spandrels. The Billiard Room occupies the first floor of the cross wing to the left (west), and features a plain late 17th-century fire surround on the west wall with a shelf on a quadrant moulding and an overmantel with recessed squares and 'L's having bolection surrounds. Similar panelling, possibly reset, appears below a 19th-century window to the right of the fireplace. The crown post roof above the ceiling is truncated at the front.

Extensive attics, now used only for storage, show central roof structures indicating substantial rebuilding of the former central range during the creation of the first floor and refronting, with the front dormers positioned below the purlin level of the front slope. A moulded brick band around the rear of the main stack suggests it predates the construction of the central outshoots oversailing the river. A length of 17th-century railing with a turned column and bobbin balusters, apparently from the landing of a staircase now removed, is preserved in the easternmost attic, where the top portion of a stair alongside the chimneystack is visible but cut and blocked off below.

Lombard House was the home of Sir Henry Chauncy (died 1700), a lawyer, Steward of the Borough, and subsequently Recorder under the Charter of 1681, and a historian of Hertfordshire. The property was also known as 'Malloryes' and was used as a judges' residence during the 18th century.