20 And 22, West Street

Nos. 20 and 22 West Street, Hertford

A hall house now subdivided into two properties, dating from the late 15th century with significant alterations and extensions spanning the 17th to 20th centuries. This is a timber-framed building with a plastered first floor and black-painted brick underbuilding on the ground floor. The roof is covered with old tiles, replaced with clay tiles over No. 22 on the left (west), with a gabled roof over the rear outshut of No. 20 and a pyramidal hipped roof over No. 22. A 20th-century pantiled roof covers a single-storey outshut beyond. Yellow-grey brick chimneystacks rise from the structure; that serving No. 22 projects well forward of the roof ridge and has a red brick cover section.

The exterior presents two storeys arranged in a three-bay Wealden pattern, with a central single-bay hall and the left (west) end of the building jettied. The first floor features three nearly flush-set nine-pane sash windows with architrave surrounds. The ground floor contains two 12-pane sashes and the doorway to No. 20 on the right, fitted with a 20th-century three-panel door and plain-glazed two-light fanlight between consoles supporting a moulded cornice hood. A carriageway with garage doors is positioned at the right. The door to No. 22 sits on the left flank elevation alongside exposed studwork beneath the jetty, with brickwork of an external chimneybreast at the right.

No. 20 contains the former hall bay, with an inserted 17th-century floor set above the plate level of the upper floor of the west wing and 17th- to 18th-century infill studding below. A 20th-century close string winder stair occupies the rear wall, and an opened-out inglenook fireplace with a timber bressumer is positioned on the right. The left side features an 18th-century cupboard with panelled doors and butterfly hinges, surrounded by an arched architrave with a projecting keyblock. The first floor displays a cambered tie beam visible in the front right-hand (west) bedroom. The left-hand bedroom is floored as a chamber within the hall. The wall plate and braces supporting the 'flying eaves' of the single-bay Wealden hall are visible inside the front wall.

No. 22 occupies the left-hand (west) wing. The ground floor front room displays exposed heavy wide-spaced studs, an 18th-century corner cupboard with shouldered architraves and a segmental head, and a wood cornice. The sash window in the front wall is a post-1989 insertion. The first-floor front bedroom retains exposed studding and a blocked 15th-century diamond-mullioned three-light unglazed wooden window immediately to the right of a late 18th-century sash. An 18th-century cellar with red brick floor and walls lies beneath.

The attic of No. 20, occupying the east bay of the roof and accessed by a 17th-century winder stair, contains a crown post roof ceiled at collar level with a mortice for longitudinal bracing of the crown post. Seventeenth-century studwork stands in front of an inserted brick chimneystack which disrupts the collar purlin. The remainder of the crown post structure is in situ. Square unmoulded posts with fore and aft bracing of the collar purlin are intensely smoke-blackened above the former hall. A scarf joint occurs in the collar purlin above. The crown post sits above the wall plate of the partition of the west cross wing. Vertical studs, blackened only on the hall side and clean elsewhere, indicate former lath and plaster infill, now removed. Ceiling is lower over the first floor of No. 22 in the west end bay. Rafters are halved and pegged.

This house represents a comparatively late and simple vernacular version of the classic Wealden house type, with a single-bay hall and entry disrupted by the inserted 17th-century chimney. The undisturbed existence of the crown post and brace at the east end, behind the attic of No. 20, indicates that the house was jettied only at the west end.