27 And 29, Railway Street

27 and 29 Railway Street, Hertford

A pair of houses, now converted to a shop with offices in a rear outshoot, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries with 20th-century alterations. The buildings are timber-framed and plastered, with old tiled roofs above wide eaves soffits.

The front elevation is two storeys with attics. The original layout included a carriageway on the right side with an entrance door in the flank wall. The first floor features two projecting casement oriel windows raised on cut profiled brackets, with mullion and transom subdivision and leaded glazing, topped by moulded cornices immediately below the eaves. A central projecting jettied bay contains a single lower set oriel window of similar design. The ground floor has been adapted with plate glass display windows and canted fascias across the bressumer, with a recessed glazed shop door at the left of the right-hand shopfront. Two 20th-century casement box dormers occupy the left side of the front; two gabled casement dormers with reproduction lead-light glazing appear on the main east elevation of the rear outshoot. A square brick chimneystack stands to the left of the frontage.

The rear features a single-storey colourwashed brick lean-to with Welsh slated roof. The long rear outshoot, now designated 'Elizabethan House', is virtually a separate building. Its first floor has two mullion and transom casement windows with opening lights featuring wood glazing bars and reproduction leaded glazing elsewhere. The ground floor, recessed below the jetty, has a battened door at the left with moulded architraves beneath a flat canopy in line with the jetty door, and three 20th-century light wood casements with glazing bars at the right.

The interior reveals considerable status through surviving joinery. The ground floor left-hand room contains a central painted oak Tuscan column standing on a tall base with curved bracing above, covered by weatherboarding indicating an original arcaded ground floor with a carriageway through to the rear. The entrance to the central staircase bay lies in the inner wall to the carriageway. The staircase hall features a moulded wood cornice and a fragment of architrave indicating a now-opened doorway to the left-hand room. The open string stair has nosed treads and carved foliated brackets, newels with four barley-sugar twist-on-bobbin balusters, a curved curtail tread at foot with balusters of vase-column-vase pattern, and ramped moulded handrail with matching dado rail. The lower flights appear to have been altered around 1900.

First-floor rooms display bold moulded wood cornices with staircases featuring bolection moulded surrounds. The rear room over the carriageway was converted to kitchen and bathroom in the 1920s. Two attics flank the central stair, roofed at collar level with exposed purlins. A tight staircase provides access to a cellar with loading doors beneath the first-floor jettied landing. The cellar is part brick-floored and contains a large fireplace with timber bressumer indicating the original kitchen position.

The rear outshoot interior has been substantially altered, though it retains a newel stair with barley-sugar twist balusters and recently exposed 17th-century framing with primary bracing. The ground floor north-facing room retains 17th-century panelling.

Despite its modest size, the building evidenced considerable status historically. A series of late 17th-century panels with early 18th-century paintings were removed from the building around 1900 and are now held in Hertford Museum. These panels feature classical subjects including Diana, Mars, Venus and Cupid; Flora and Pomona; the Judgement of Paris; and still-life compositions.