Gravesons

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.