Description

HERTFORD

TL3212NE MILL ROAD
817-1/17/117 (East side)
04/04/74 Hertford East Station

II

Railway station with terminal booking hall, concourse, porte
cocheres, platform canopies and screen walls. 1888, with C20
alterations. Built for the Great Eastern Railway. Architect WN
Ashbee (d.1919). Orange-red brick, laid to English bond, with
stone windows, bands, dressings and cornices, beneath a hipped
and gabled roof with C20 tile covering.
Free Renaissance style with mixed Jacobean and Queen Anne
motifs.
EXTERIOR: single storey; 4 bay main frontage to Mill Street,
with stone coped Dutch gables with scrollwork and finials,left
and right 2 stone mullion and transom 4-light windows, above
broad stone band and brick plinth, with moulded 3 cornice
bands and carved strapwork above. Bold projecting 2 bay porte
cochere (now roofless) in centre, with brick piers on plinths
with moulded stone caps, stone fascia bands, dentil cornices,
and elliptical arches with dripmoulds and projecting
channelled keyblocks. Pulvinated responds against stone
fascia, dentil course, cornice and blocking course. Return
flanks of porte cochere have 1 elliptical and 1 semicircular
arch similarly detailed. Setback centre of facade has 2
mullion and transom windows, with carved tympana above, under
elliptical rubbed brick arches, with stone dripmould and
carved keyblock. Booking hall with 2 central doorways,with
twin leaf 6 raised and fielded panel doors, and each with
rectangular traceried fanlight. Carved strapwork stone tympani
beneath moulded ogee arches. Bays divided by carved stone
baluster column on a brick plinth with stone band and cap,
with corbel block above supporting 2 broad segmental arches in
which stone voussoirs alternate with rubbed red brick. Setback
ends to front range at far left and right, each with
triple-light mullioned window with stone scrollwork and carved
panel above, and stone cornice band with small floating
pediment above centre light. Upper cornice and pierced stone
parapet conceal roof eaves. 6 bay simplified return north
elevation with 3 and 4 light stone mullioned windows. Return
south elevation faces Railway Street. Projecting 3 bay porte
cochere, with red brick piers with stone moulded bases and
cornices and elliptical arches with stone voussoirs
alternating with rubbed red brick. Stone cornice below
stone-coped brick parapet concealing 3 bay part lead-roll,

part glazed roofs. Stone mullioned window, with carved
scrollwork and foliated panels above, set back on south return
flank of frontage block, returning north along concourse with
stone mullion and transom windows and door surrounds.
Platforms 1 and 2 have slender cast-iron columns with
strapwork bases, fluted upper shafts, and caps with moulded
cushion blocks above inverted small Ionic volutes, supporting
traceried arches and girders with ridge and furrow roofs,
terminating in scalloped boarded valances. Platform 2 backed
by north range of buildings, with piers and arcading
corresponding to the platform bays, and with a ridge and
furrow parapeted screen wall beyond, reduced in height with
flat coping beyond the now shortened limit of the platform
canopy. Platform 1 has a similar canopy and outer screen wall
with ridge and furrow parapet.
Roofs: central octagonal louvred cupola with lead base and
ogee profile domed roof with iron finial. Prominent chimneys
left and right of principal (west) elevation with red brick
with arcaded sides. Stone moulded cornice, cap with pulvinated
frieze, and upper cornice with blocking course, rising from
external chimneybreasts with gabled link to main roofs.
Subsidiary brick shafted chimneys on north range with
oversailing course band and at top. Glazed ridge and furrow
roof over south porte cochere, concourse and platforms.
INTERIOR: booking hall has ceiling with coved moulded beams
and moulded strapwork. Concourse divided into 3 toplit square
bays beyond the porte cochere, bold coved boarded and battened
ceiling, with pyramidal rooflights; porte cochere has
wrought-iron tie rod trusses above exposed steel girders.
HISTORICAL NOTE: WN Ashbee worked in the office of Edward
Wilson the Great Eastern Railway Engineer and was Clerk of
Works and Resident Architect during the construction of
Liverpool Street Station in London 1874-76. In 1883 he became
Head of the Great Eastern Railway Architects' Department.
Hertford East was one of a number of stations in Free
Renaissance style including Southend Victoria and Norwich
Thorpe. Hertford East replaced the earlier Eastern Counties
Railway Station further east along Railway Street, but this
survived as a goods terminal until 1964.
(The industrial archaeology of the British Isles: Branch
Johnson W: Industrial Archaeology of Hertfordshire: Newton
Abbot: 1970-: 128, 143, 168; The Buildings of England: Pevsner
N: Hertfordshire: Harmondsworth: 1977-: 187; Green L:
Hertford's Past in pictures: Ware: 1993-: 84-5; Felstead A:
Directory of British Architects 1834-1900: London: 1993-: 25;
Biddle G and Nock OS: The Railway Heritage of Britain: London:
1983-: 19-20; Buck G: The Pictorial Survey of Railway
Stations: Oxford: 1992-: 86).

Listing NGR: TL3298212923

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Hertford East railway station at Wikipedia
• Hertford East railway station official website
• Wikidata Q2472778

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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