Gravesons is a Grade II listed building in the East Hertfordshire local planning authority area, England. Department store. 1 related planning application.
Gravesons
- WRENN ID
- peeling-belfry-root
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- East Hertfordshire
- Constituency
- Hertford and Stortford MP: Josh Dean (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Type
- Department store
- Address
- Gravesons, 1 and 3, Maidenhead Street, Hertford, SG14 1DP
- OS grid reference
- TL 326 126
- Coordinates
- 51.7966, -0.07764
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
This is a department store built around 1895 in Hertford. It is constructed of colourwashed brick with stucco dressings, featuring a structural cast-iron ground floor and interior columns, and a swept, curved Welsh slate roof with a lead flat crown. A truncated yellow brick chimney is located against the rear wall of nearby properties.
The building has a bold curved plan and facade that sweeps from Salisbury Square to Maidenhead Street. The exterior is two storeys and attics high. The first floor has six windows with plate glazing and upper transom lights, set within projecting moulded stucco architraves with recessed scalloped panels and a moulded cornice above. Brick pilasters and recessed panels are located between the windows, with scalloped ornament at the upper level. Above the first-floor windows is a swag-ornamented fascia, a dentil-modillion course, and a moulded cornice. The ground floor has a continuous shopfront with six bays, not precisely aligned with the first floor above. It features slender cast-iron barleysugar twist columns with roll-moulded bases and foliated caps, set on plinth blocks. A continuous fascia with a dentil-modillion course and moulded cornice runs at the level of the first floor sill. Canted, timber-framed, plate-glazed display cases with arcaded heads and lead flat tops were installed in the 1980s between the columns. An arcaded glazed entrance is located second bay from the right, and to the right of the shopfront is a door with a moulded stucco architrave surround. The roof has two tall sash dormers with glazed cheeks and segmental-pedimented lead-covered roofs.
The interior is open-plan to provide uninterrupted retail space and lacks distinctive features. The south side of the building opens into adjacent properties at both ground and first-floor levels.
The drapery trade in Hertford was historically dominated by Quaker families, including Pollards, Robinsons, and Gravesons. In the late 18th century, Graveson and Robinson joined forces and built new premises on the site of numbers 1 and 3 Maidenhead Street.
Local climate
Gravesons sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 88% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 84% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 33 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 55% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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