Gravesons

HERTFORD

TL3212NE MAIDENHEAD STREET 817-1/17/106 (South side) Nos.1 AND 3 Gravesons

GV II

Department store. c1895. Colourwashed brick with stucco dressings, structural cast-iron ground floor and interior columns; swept curved Welsh slated roof, with lead flat crown. Truncated yellow brick chimney at left against rear wall of Nos 10 & 11 Market Place (qv), and No.8 Salisbury Square (qv). Bold curved plan and facade sweeps round from Salisbury Square to Maidenhead Street frontage at right. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attics. First floor has 6 windows, plate glazed, with upper transom lights, in timber-frames, recessed in projecting moulded stucco architraves, with recessed scalloped panel and moulded cornice above. Between windows are brick pilasters and recessed panels, with scalloped ornament at upper level. Above first-floor windows is swag-ornamented fascia, dentil-modillion course and moulded cornice. Ground floor has continuous shopfront, its 6 bays not precisely aligned with first floor above, with slender cast-iron barleysugar twist columns, with roll moulded bases and foliated caps, set on plinth blocks. Continuous fascia with dentil-modillion course and moulded cornice at first floor sill level. Canted sided timber-framed plate glazed display cases with arcaded heads and lead flat tops installed in 1980s between columns; arcaded glazed entrance doors second bay from right; right of shopfront is door with moulded stucco architrave surround. Roof with 2 tall sash dormers with glazed cheeks and segmental-pedimented lead-covered roofs. INTERIOR: open-plan to provide uninterrupted retail space, no distinctive features visible. South side opens into Nos 10 and 11 Market Place (qv) at ground and first-floor levels. HISTORICAL NOTE: the drapery trade in Hertford was dominated by the Pollards, Robinsons and Gravesons, all Quaker families, from the turn of the C18/C19. By the end of the century Graveson and Robinson had joined forces and built new premises on the site of Nos 1 & 3 Maidenhead Street. (Green L: Hertford's Past in pictures: Ware: 1993-: 112-3).

Listing NGR: TL3266112630