Best of British Blog
Blog Entry - 16 January 2012
I am lucky to live in what is an ancient English market town. Hertford is well known for its historical and architectural heritage. Nearly every property in the town centre has found its way in to the Listed Buildings Index. Most are Grade II and many have some special internal features or as below some other unique external decoration.
When I was Town Centre Manager my opposite number in Ware Dave Walton once told the local radio station that the interest in the town came from looking upwards. The first and second floors and roofs of most of the buildings have remained unchanged over the centuries and here are where the outstanding and unique features can be seen.
It is a very astute comment on our history but this page concentrates on a few features that can be seen at eye level and almost missed if you did not know about them.
On the wall of the Health Centre in Bull Plain is this commemorative stone set into the brickwork.
It commemorates the opening of the centre by Lt Col. Oswald McMullen. Unfortunately some of the lettering was scarred during the renovation work a few years back.
But this is not of importance here. Quite visible are six drilled holes around the top and bottom edge. This is where bolts were screwed in to hold a plain piece of wood. This was done at the outset of World War Two so that if an enemy invaded they would not know that this was Hertford as all identifying marks had been covered up.
This looks like a plain painted door. It is at the side of Cafe Yum Yum in Old Cross
that used to be Wiggingtons Antique Shop.
In between the two top panels you can just make out a small slit in the woodwork. This was an old fashioned letter box.
It was wide enough for one piece of mail but I doubt if it could cope with the bulky piles of bills and junk mail that come through our doors today.
This strange object can be found at first floor level of Beckwiths Antiques in St
Andrew Street. It is called a snuffer or to give it its correct term -
A link was a pitch torch which was lit by pedestrians to find their way around the streets during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Yesterday when I was taking these photos I discovered this on the side of Green Dragon
Vaults in Maidenhead Street, above Ladbrokes Betting Shop.
It used to be called the Green Dragon Inn but is now a block of apartments. It is the very first time I have ever noticed this. Anybody even me, can be surprised by just looking at things in front of their nose.