The Walnuts (Number 23) Including Front Railings

A house, originally a hall house, now subdivided to form offices (No.21) and a house (No.23). The building dates from the mid to late 15th century and was altered, partly reconstructed and extended in the 17th and 18th centuries, with 1960s alterations and a shopfront added to No.21, and comprehensive restoration carried out to No.23 between 1993 and 1995.

The structure is timber-framed and plastered with multiple gabled roofs featuring moulded eaves cornice and old tiles. Red brick chimneys with oversailing courses and long clay pots are present; a twin shafted stack is linked by oversailing courses on the right (west) side, while a rendered brick external chimneybreast stands at the left (east) front.

The building follows a four-bay plan with the hall occupying the central two bays and cross wings in line. An unjettied buttery and store occupy the right (west) end of the hall. The hall was reconstructed in the 17th century to incorporate a first (chamber) floor, and an external fireplace was added at the rear (south). Wings were added to the left and right in the late 17th century, and a large rear room extending across ground and first floors was added in the 18th century to create a double-depth formation. A cellar was excavated below the hall at the same date.

The main elevation to Castle Street displays two storeys with attics to the right (west). The first floor has five flush-set wood sash windows, each 8 by 8 panes, with heavy quadrant bars and some crown glass set within architrave surrounds. Two right-hand windows have fascia and cornice above and a plat band below the sills. Two central windows are raised with heads under the eaves, while the left and right windows sit in breaks from the front under gables of the cross wings. The ground floor features a canted bay with sashes to the left, two large sashes in the centre (12 panes above 8 panes) with external two-panelled wood shutters, and a smaller 8 by 8-pane sash to the right also with shutters and a surround similar to the first floor. A doorway in the right cross wing contains a six-fielded panel door with upper two panes glazed, recessed in an architrave surround cut by a triple keyblock, a stone step, and a flat doorhood with moulded cornice on cut brackets.

The return elevation to the left (east) displays an external rendered chimneybreast and a red brick corner with ramped coping. The first floor has a five-light leaded casement window, and a modern three-light small-paned wood casement window sits on the ground floor. A projecting two-storey gabled wing with an outshoot to the left faces east and is now part of No.21.

The flank elevation features a two-light leaded casement window on the first floor and two flush-set sashes on the ground floor. The principal east elevation has flush-set coupled 19th-century sashes on the first floor below a gable, with a single four-pane sash above plain glazing to the left. The ground floor is dominated by a full-width modern projecting shopfront with small-paned display windows to left and right, a central recessed entrance, continuous fascia, moulded cornice and flat roof.

The side (west) elevation to No.23 has a hipped return, a gabled staircase turret rising to the attic, and a right (south) projecting wing of two storeys and attic with gables facing west and south. The fenestration is scattered, predominantly 20th-century wood two- and three-light small-paned casements, though a three-light oak mullioned window on the first floor sits to the left of the stair turret.

The rear (south) elevation is gabled to the left, with later construction of the south wing oversailing and concealing half of the second gable. The first floor displays an oak mullion and transom window to the left, a 12-pane flush-set sash in the centre, and one large slightly recessed 12-pane sash in the south wing to the right. The ground floor contains a 20th-century black weatherboarded tiled-roofed lean-to and conservatory to the left, and one large triple sash (four-pane, 12-pane, four-pane configuration) to the right in the south wing.

Interior of No.21: The ground floor has been much altered and opened out. The first floor east front room retains 17th-century panelling and a cornice featuring crude triglyph and strap ornament.

Interior of No.23: A vestibule in the west cross wing opens left into the central hall through mid to late 15th-century twin ogee-headed doorways with chamfered jambs. To the right of the vestibule is a 17th-century west wing. The hall contains a substantial 17th-century brick fireplace in the centre of the rear wall. Late 17th-century oak panelling is present; behind the panelling of the front wall immediately right of the screens, hard against the ceiling and mid-plate, lies an unglazed early 17th-century three-light window with ovolo-moulded mullions and intermediate slender diamond mullions to anchor leaded glazing (no longer extant). Heavy beams supporting the first floor were inserted later. To the left of the fireplace is a spiral timber newel staircase leading to the first floor. The large rear ground floor room has an 18th-century moulded wood cornice.

The main stair features 20th-century turned balusters. An adjoining short top flight leads to a large rear bedroom, in which a fragment of mid-19th-century wallpaper was extant at inspection, featuring a motif of arched surrounds framing landscape and garden scenes printed in sepia. The large rear bedroom was altered in 1994 to incorporate an integral bathroom. The large front chamber above the hall has a central tie beam showing a filled mortice indicating former longitudinal beams that were removed when the ceiling was raised in the 18th century; at the east end, the tie beam has a roughly cut-back arch brace against the outer wall post. A much-altered bolection-moulded fire surround and part-reset 17th-century panelling are present.

The west cross wing is ceiled at collar level with a crown post roof. The 17th-century rear west wing rear bedroom has an oak mullion and transom window and a dogleg stair from the first floor to the attics with a newel bearing a moulded cap. The gabled attic has a door to a second attic to the east, now partly enclosed by the roof over the rear (south) 18th-century wing, though earlier roof structure partly remains intact, including a three-light window in the south gable now covered externally by roughcast. The roof over the rear bedroom has been much restored with 20th-century sawn timber. The roof over the west cross-wing features halved and pegged rafters. The roof over the hall has smoke-blackened halved and pegged rafters, but clearly reset, as assembly marks and mortices for former collars (now removed) are inconsistent; no remains of former crown post structure survive. The roof is now stiffened by an 18th-century peg-jointed queen strut and side purlin structure. The cellar beneath the hall of No.23 has red brick walls and a paviour floor, with an 18th-century trelliswork meat safe featuring a plank door with HL-hinges.

Mid-19th-century cast-iron railings run along the street frontage, featuring spear uprights, bay supports with urn finials, and ogee bracing.

The building and others in Castle Street and West Street lay outside Hertford in the Brickendon Liberty until the mid 17th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 'The Walnuts' was the home of the Hertfordshire historian and antiquarian R.T. Andrews.