Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire

Round we go  

Sometimes the way a building turns a corner can be the best thing about it. I remember in a past post describing a particularly noticeable corner tower on a building in London – a 1930s version of many such markings of the junction between one street and another. This house in Bishop's Stortford is almost the opposite, small where the other building was grand and statement-making. Presumably there was a triangular site, where two roads, Basbow Lane and King Street, met at an acute angle. The builder (probably in the early-19th century) made full use of the plot, creating a triangular building with this beautiful curve at the junction. The bricklayer obliged with some careful brickwork.

Even if the house is only about six feet wide at the apex, it does the two things it should – makes full use of the available land and turns the corner gracefully. Steps, bricks, and trees make an interesting bit of urban scenery too, rendering a small building dramatic and turning a change of level into an architectural surprise. Modest? Yes. Unregarded? Probably. But sometimes, in townscape as in life, it's the small things that matter.

Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire

Right stuff, White Stuff

“Ah, I know what that will be,” I thought to myself, looking up above a shop called White Stuff in the main street in Bishop’s Stortford. I was thinking that the building must have been a pub called the White Hart – a common pub name after all – and that I was looking at its former sign. Big 3-D signs like this are uncommon, but they do exist, and I was pleased to find another.

How wrong could I be? This magnificent beast is in fact the emblem of a volunteer regiment, the First Hertfordshire Light Horse. It was made in 1862 for the regiment’s barracks, but a few years later (some sources says in 1868, others 1872) the regiment disbanded. Major William Holland rescued the stag and had it mounted above the window of a shop he owned, where it stayed until the shop was pulled down in 1983.

Then the hart was restored and installed on this shop in 1986, where it has been ever since. It’s seriously large, this stag – it towers over the adjacent sash window, which must be well over 4 feet tall – and its shaggy coat is vigorously rendered. It’s an asset to the streetscape, a reminder of a bit of 19th-century history, and an object lesson in the way some features survive, as if truly alive and kicking, against all the odds.

Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire

A bold front

Pargetting, decoratively moulded exterior plasterwork, is a technique I associate with Suffolk, where plastered walls bear images of flowers, fruit, heraldry, and all kinds of abstract patterns. But decorative plasterwork is also found farther west, and here it is in Hertfordshire, adorning the front of the former White Horse pub in Bishop's Stortford, a building that’s now a restaurant.

The White Horse was a pub for most of its life, closing in the 1930s, after which it was home to a succession of different shops. It has been a restaurant since the 1990s. The yard at the back, which housed the inn’s stables, has also been home to activities as diverse as a poultry market, a slaughterhouse, and a small brewery. So the building had a chequered history behind its bold and striking frontage.

The plasterwork on the facade is modern (I’ve seen early-20th century photographs of the building with plain plaster) and conceals a timber frame that dates back to the 16th century. The design is quite simple – mostly abstract patterns set off by bands of bunches of grapes – but it makes the building stand out and was catching the sun beautifully on the day I passed by.