Number 43 Including St Nicholas Hall

Number 43, a house now used as an antique shop, incorporates a former church hall at the rear. The building dates from the 15th century, with alterations and extensions from the early 17th century. The rear range of a 15th-century cottage was demolished in 1892 and rebuilt as St Nicholas Hall.

The front range is timber-framed and plastered, with exposed studwork, while the rear is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond, or red and colourwashed brick in English bond forming the former St Nicholas Hall. The front range retains an old tiled roof, while St Nicholas Hall is covered with sandfaced clay tiles.

The exterior comprises a three-bay front range from the 15th century, with an additional bay added to the left (east) in the 17th century. All bays have jettied overhanging first floors. The building is two storeys with attics. The first-floor left contains a 17th-century oriel bay with wood casements featuring a bold ogee-profile lower spandrel and head below the overhang of an attic dormer above, with a small nine-pane casement to the right set below the eaves. The 15th-century range to the right has a twelve-pane Yorkshire sash window beneath an attic dormer overhang, and at the far right a small twelve-pane Yorkshire sash.

The exposed timber bracing is of two periods: thin studs with primary bracing, and three right-hand bays with close heavy studding and downward-curved windbracing at corners. The positions of two blocked windows are visible, one partly filled by a Yorkshire sash. An exposed bressumer and beam ends are evident. Ground floor beneath the jetty has a 20th-century restored casement bay window with canted sills at the left, with exposed studwork beside it. A central 17th-century oak front door with raised bands and raised and fielded panels faces the street. To the right, a mid-20th-century shopfront comprises moulded oak mullions with plain glazed closed lights over a red brick stallriser, with two three-quarter glazed oak doors at the centre.

The front range displays two 17th-century gabled casement dormers with exposed studwork jettied out above the first floor. A massive central red brick chimneystack with band and oversailing cap rises prominently.

The left (east) flank elevation was rebuilt in red brick. The right-hand (west) flank elevation retains exposed studwork at all levels, with a small two-light casement in the gable end lighting the attic, and on the ground floor at the left, a continuation of the shop window with narrow lights between moulded oak mullions.

The rear (south) elevation features a red brick first floor, a black weatherboarded gabled stair turret with two small two-light casement windows, and a late 19th-century single-storey stuccoed lean-to with a Welsh slated roof.

St Nicholas Hall, facing St Andrew's Churchyard to the west, is designed in the Free Arts and Crafts style. It is largely single storey, with an upper floor (former gallery) at the left and a mezzanine, with the original stage level at the right; an attic floor was inserted over the full length in 1970. The entrance at the left has a four-centred brick Tudor arch with dripmould, bearing applied lettering reading 'St Nicholas Hall', now fitted with a plate glass display window set in the former doorframe. Above this is an embattled parapet roof, with a setback gable containing a central three-light lattice-glazed wood casement window and exposed studwork above, with a bargeboard and turned wood finial.

A five-bay hall to the right features four lattice-glazed three-light wood casements and twin-leaf doors with a two-light fanlight on the right. At the far right is an exposed studded and plastered gable with a large eight-light mullion and transom window; the corner of the gable is chamfered and the verge cantilevered out over an access driveway.

St Nicholas Hall is topped with small triangular dormers and an octagonal central louvred ventilator cupola on the ridge, featuring a lead-roll drum, timber louvred panels, an ogee-profile lead cap, and an iron finial.

Internally, the ground floor of the front block is opened out as a single retail space but subdivided by a massive fireplace and chimney with a timber bressumer and chamfered and tongue-stopped beams exposed in the ceiling. The wall plate beneath the jetty shows mortices for studs, window mullions, and shutter grooves at the west corner. In the centre of the ground floor, reset as a prop, stands a late 15th-century octagonal crown post with an elaborate roll and ogee-moulded base and roll and cavetto-moulded cap, recovered from 30 Parliament Square during its demolition. The rear wall has open studwork looking into the former St Nicholas Hall.

The first floor is now approached by a 20th-century stair through St Nicholas Hall, though an original tight 17th-century winder stair with a central newel remains in the stair turret to the rear. The first floor is also opened out as a single sales area, subdivided by a chimney with a moulded brick four-centred arched fireplace. On the third bay line from the left stands a braced tie beam truss with heavy long-jowled posts, chamfered with a plain tongue stop, with a chamfered and tongue-stopped tie beam and chamfered braces. At ceiling level, the adjoining post to the wall plate of the rear wall displays mortices for diamond-pattern mullions and shutter grooves. The central longitudinal beams are iron-strapped to the tie beam, and the exposed joints of the attic floor are of lighter section than those of the first floor. The mortices for studs of the end of the three-bay structure are visible alongside the chimney. The oriel window in the (east) end bay has ovolo-moulded 17th-century mullions.

The attics are now converted into a flat. The upper face of the tie beam truss described above is exposed and features a central mortice indicating a former crown post structure, presumably removed during the 17th-century conversion of the attics and flooring over of a two-bay first-floor hall below. The west bay has a raised-floor level, seen below as a raised plastered ceiling; the floor structure was not accessible. Only the east room has a fireplace at attic level. The roof rafters over the central section show no sign of smoke blackening, suggesting either an unheated hall or the contemporary construction of a smoke hood in the position of the internal chimneybreast.

St Nicholas Hall is commemorated by a mahogany panel, now fixed at the first-floor level of the frontage block, inscribed: 'Our kinsmen the citizens of Hartford Connecticut USA gave the first gifts towards the erection of this hall of St Nicholas in the birthplace of their forefathers AD 1892'.

Historically, St Nicholas Hall commemorates a former parish of Hertford that was unified with St Andrew's around 1707. The last rector had been presented as early as 1424, and the church was demolished in 1675. It was originally sited near the river on the present Maidenhead Yard, where it appears on John Speed's map published in 1610.