12, High Street

12 High Street, Ware

A mid 18th-century former maltsters house, substantially altered in the 19th century and again in the 1920s, when it became a shop. Originally numbered as 8, 10 and 12 High Street, the building comprises a front range and rear outshoot with adjoining ranges. It is built in dark red brick with orange dressings laid to Flemish Bond, with a hipped tiled roof behind a parapet. The exterior features painted bands at first floor and cill level, moulded cornices above first floor window heads, and moulded bands above second floor window heads.

The front range rises three storeys. On the first and second floors are four sash windows with glazing bars, flush-set with exposed boxes, set under rubbed flat arches. At ground floor left stands a mid 18th-century six-panelled front door in a pilaster surround, probably relocated from a side entrance in the 1920s. The present shopfront, inserted in the 1920s when the Enfield Highway Co-operative Society greatly extended the premises eastwards along Star Street, features narrow tiled stallrisers, bronze-cilled and mullioned shop windows, and plate glass with wooden-paned upper lights containing ornamental stained glass with patterns of swags and pendants. A deep fascia and blind box complete the shopfront treatment. The extension along Star Street, built as a single-storey range across the original yard, created a series of retail units.

The mid 18th-century rear outshoot is built in dark red brick laid to Flemish Bond with an old tiled roof behind a parapet. It features one hipped dormer with a casement window and moulded cornice, and one flat-roofed modern dormer with modern casement windows. A slab-like brick chimneystack rises from the rear parapet. This section comprises two storeys with three sash windows with glazing bars on the first floor under rubbed flat arches, two twentieth-century windows under reduced openings, and a blank recess. The ground floor was partly demolished in the 1920s to open out the shop.

The rear range dates to the late 17th century and is built in dark red brick with an old tiled roof featuring an eaves course of Welsh slate. Two dormers with casements, moulded cornices and hipped tiled roofs project from the roof, and a slab-like brick chimneystack forms a parapet at the right-hand rear gable. The left-hand gable is parapeted and stucco-covered. This range comprises two storeys and attics, with four bays on both ground and first floors. These contain mullion and transom windows in shallow reveals with nineteenth-century wooden casements. Ground floor windows sit under segmental arches. The first floor left-hand window retains original leaded-light glazing except for the lower left light, which has a nineteenth-century casement. The second bay from the left features an archaic Venetian landing window in a round-arched recess with heavy pegged frames and leaded lights.

The interior of the front building was gutted and the floor lowered in the early 1920s. The west ground floor of the rear wing retains a simple wooden dado with recessed panels. A mid eighteenth-century dog-leg stair survives in the landing of the rear outshoot, originally running from the ground floor. The stair has open string construction with fluted newels topped by Tuscan capitals and moulded caps, foliated tread ends, and turned balusters with pillar and urn surmounted by iron twists. The moulded handrails are ramped. The dado features a moulded rail with fielded and raised panels with quadrant moulding. The first floor landing is partly panelled above the dado, with a dentil frieze and moulded cornice. A long eighteenth-century window on the half-landing has sashes with heavy quadrant glazing bars and panelled shutters in reveals. The front right-hand attic features a simple architrave fire surround with moulded support to the mantelshelf, and simple two-panel closet doors. The rear wing contains a simple dog-leg newel stair with turned balusters and moulded handrail, running from ground floor to attics. First floor rooms in the rear wing have simple dados with moulded rails.

In the eighteenth century, the house was home to the Burr family, prominent Quaker maltsters. The Friends Meeting House, which had its main entrance from Kibes Lane, stood directly behind the property and was demolished in 1889.