Record Office, Library And Register Office

The Record Office, Library and Register Office, on Peg’s Lane in Hertford, was built between 1936 and 1939. Designed by James and Bywaters in collaboration with Rowland Pierce, it originally served as a Motor Tax Office and County Library Headquarters.

The building is constructed of buff-brown brick laid in English garden wall and one third stretcher bonds, with Portland stone dressings and a handmade tile roof concealed behind a parapet. It is in a stripped Georgian style. The building has an L-shaped plan with a main block, including a basement, facing south. A return flank, forming part of the library, faces east onto Peg's Lane.

The south elevation is two storeys high. The first floor has twelve bays with squat twelve-pane sash windows, each recessed beneath a brick flat arch. The ground floor has six tall twenty-pane sashes. The entrance is located in the fourth bay from the east and features a tall semicircular headed brick arch containing a recessed Portland stone architrave surround for twin-leaf panelled hardwood doors. The doors have circular bolection-moulded inner panels, a fanlight bearing stylized 'HCC' initials, and a hardwood panelled tympanum above. To the east is a single-bay flank facing Peg’s Lane, housing a set-back library block of nine bays with tall twenty-four-pane sash windows, recessed with rubbed brick arches and Portland stone keyblocks carved with animals and birds. The windows are arranged in a syncopated relationship with the ground-floor windows to coincide with every fourth squat twelve-pane window. A separate entrance to the library, on the left, features twin-leaf panelled hardwood doors, a Portland stone architrave surround, a panel with the inscription 'County Library', flanking porches, outer Tuscan pilasters with a block frieze, and a coved cornice. The entrance is accessed by six steps with flanking plinths and iron railings. A plinth band runs across the elevation, incorporating a niche containing a sculpture of a boy with a cricket bat, with the date '1939' above his head, a coved cornice, and a moulded banded sill. Steps connect the entrance to Peg’s Lane, flanked by walls with Portland stone plinths and caps, and simple iron gates. Garages and screen walls are located to the rear, within a service yard.

The building's design incorporates modifications to a 1935 competition-winning design for County Hall itself, resulting from revisions in March 1937 and completed in Summer 1939 alongside the main County Hall block.