Henry Traylen
A report on two buildings in Stamford:
LONDON INN, St John’s Street,
HALF MOON INN, St Paul’s Street,
by the architect
HENRY FRANCIS TRAYLEN, FRIBA, FSA, (1874-1947)
in support of an application for listed building status.
Henry Francis Traylen
Career.
Date of birth: 18 March 1874
Date of death: 5 July 1947
H F Traylen, born in Leicester, was the son of John Charles Traylen (1845-1907 and came to Stamford in 1884 after his father bought the Stamford architectural practice of Browning, father and son, in 1881. (Edward Browning, 1816-1882)
1884-1891, educated Stamford School.
1891-5, articled to his father.
1894, passed qualifying exams for the Royal Institute of British Architects.
1895-c.1900, assistant at the Leicester Architectural practice of Everard and Pick,
1895-c.1899, attended Peterborough and Leicester Colleges of Art.
1899, became Associate Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA)
1901, awarded RIBA Silver Star for measured drawings of Burghley House. (Originals in Stamford Museum.)
In these early years he also spent some time as assistant to the Surveyor at Windsor Castle (a family friend) and two years at the Admiralty, where he spent much of his time inspecting the chapels of the shore stations of the Royal Navy
Returned to Stamford, because of his father’s ill health, and worked with him until his death in 1907.
1906, became partner, the practice being known as Traylen & Son.
1907-1921/2, continued practice alone.
Succeeded father as Surveyor of Ecclesiastical Dilapidations in the archdeaconries of Oakham and Lincoln (these refer only to parsonages.)
1908, took on as assistant, Frederick James Lenton (1888-1960).
1921/2, Lenton, who had served as a lieutenant in the First World War, became a partner, and practice thereafter became Traylen & Lenton (continues today as W J Hemmings.)
1922, became Fellow of Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA)
1927, elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) in recognition of his antiquarian studies in Stamford. Became its local secretary for Lincolnshire and Rutland
c.1917-1947, secretary and treasurer, Rutland Archaeological Society
1930s, Local secretary for the Ancient Monuments Act under HM Office of Works
1939-1944, President of the Northants, Beds. and Hunts. Association of Architects.
1939-1945, during Second World War, appointed by Ministry of Works as its ‘architect responsible for the general supervision of the repair of ancient monuments, churches and historic buildings damaged through enemy action’.
1945, retired from Traylen and Lenton.
Works.
A long, but probably not exhaustive, list of works compiled by this author from various sources is deposited in Stamford Museum; the major sources for this being the ‘Jubilee Book’ (1935) of E S Bowman & Son, Stamford, HFT’s photographic albums and lists in the British Architectural Library.
Though Traylen specialised in ecclesiastical work, in the period between his father’s death and World War One his practice was mixed and included many secular buildings. Among these are:
Apethorpe: cottages, almshouses and the New Inn (now King’s Head) 1913. Further details of his work at Apethorpe can be found in his article in the Architectural Review for April 1924.
1911, Thornhaugh Hall
1911, Stamford, S side of Priory Road, houses, recommended (but misattributed) by Pevsner (1st edtn, 1964) as ‘nicely placed and grouped’.
1911, Stamford, 2 houses, St Paul’s Street, ‘South Lawn’ and ‘Greyfriars’
1913, Wansford, house
His pre-war church work, apart from many restorations and minor works such as reredoses, desks, etc. included:
1902, Wansford, new chancel, (with his father)
1904, High Barnet, restoration of church
1910 and pre-1914(?) Ketton, lychgate and new vestry
1911-12, Groby, Leics. new chancel and its furnishings
1913, Stamford, major restoration of tower and spire of St Mary’s
Other tower and spire restorations are: Duddington (1907), Braybrooke (1914), Deeping St James (1914), Whittlesea (1914), Easton (1915).
During the War he, like many other architects, Traylen had a lean time and, as his son Michael claimed, became little more than a clerk of works supervising the erection of temporary buildings for the Ministry of Defence. The war over, Traylen recovered his career by designing a large number of war memorials: e.g. Broad Street Stamford, village crosses at Apethorpe, Easton-on-the-Hill, churchyard crosses at Belton (Rutland), Collyweston, Thornhaugh, Werrington, lychgate at Weston (Lincs) and many other memorials: panels, tablets, lychgates, doorways throughout the east of England.
After the War and his partnership with Fred Lenton, Lenton tended to concentrate on secular buildings and Traylen on churches, and his obituary in the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries states ‘All the Stamford churches and many others up and down the country, particularly in Northamptonshire and Rutland, bear evidence of his work.’ However, there was one exception to this division of labour: Stamford’s historic buildings. He became their champion and was a forceful advocate, protecting, recording and rebuilding in a sympathetic style if demolition was inevitable. For example, in 1934 he weighed in strongly against the inspectorate of the Office of Works, when they declared that nothing of historic value had been found during the demolition of the mound of Stamford castle, now the bus station. Traylen’s photographs of the castle keep discovered during demolition (copies in Stamford museum) disprove this! He was also instrumental in moving a threatened historic doorway from 10 High Street to the only remaining upstanding part of the castle (where it survives today). Similarly, he was behind the preservation of the threatened 17th century building behind the Stamford Mercury offices. It was re-erected on the edge of the bus station fronting Sheep Market, and although his name is not mentioned in the work, a measured drawing by him survives and the Tudor arched heads to the doorways on the bus station side of the building are distinctive and typical of his work. He also saved the 1845 monumental arch during the widening of Wharf Road in 1937 by repositioning it parallel to the street. It survived then and also the recent redevelopment of the site. In 1938 he saved a 17th century bay from a demolished house in St Leonard’s Street and moved it to Barnack to front the house of the artist Wilfrid Wood. It also survives. During the 1930s therefore, Traylen was what we today would call a conservation architect and way ahead of his time. This sensitivity is also reflected in his major ecclesiastical project in Stamford in the interwar period, the extension of c.1200 Stamford School Chapel, the former St Paul’s Church, in 1929-30.
His love of Stamford’s vernacular 17th century domestic buildings showed itself in the many lectures he gave on this subject, in the Stamford area and at the Society of Antiquaries in London, so it was natural that when demolition in Stamford’s town centre was unavoidable, Traylen, when he got the contract, rebuilt in a sympathetic style that also happened to be his favourite. This happened twice in Stamford, both public houses, in 1938 and 1939, and they define Stamford architecturally in the 1930s. The former Half Moon Inn at the corner of Star Lane and St Paul’s Street and the London Inn, at the corner of St John’s Street and Castle Street, are both products of Traylen’s sympathetic handling of difficult situations. The results are clearly of the 1930s and they are both fine, but underrated buildings, and worthy of placing at grade II on the statutory List of Historic Buildings. 1930s buildings are still not given the consideration they deserve and without protection, demolition or unsympathetic alteration can easily happen to the best of them.
Half Moon Inn (architect, Henry F Traylen)
Built 1938 in a Stamford early 17th century vernacular domestic style. The two street frontages of the building are of local Lincolnshire ashlar limestone, topped with a Collyweston slate roof. Though all the visible frontages are in traditional materials, the invisible side and rear walls are of brick and the rear roof slopes Welsh slate. There seems to be some reuse of second-hand stone on the street façades, which gave it a used look even when new. The stone seems to be a mixture, mostly Stamford/Casterton, possibly some Ketton. Most of the window jambs, door frames and coins are of sand/mortar based artificial stone, though some on the St Paul’s Street façade are in natural stone. Where there is no erosion the artificial stone looks quite authentic, but 70 years of rain washing has taken the top surfaces off exposed faces. It can be seen that the stone was specially moulded for this building and made up using coarse sharp sand.
The building consists of a longer Star Lane façade of three bays with an off-centre doorway, the two northern bays having flush gables; a splayed corner bay topped with a gable resting on cyma profile kneeler stones; and a St Paul’s Street façade of three bays with a central doorway and a flush gable over the centre bay. The fenestration is typical domestic 17th century with windows of three lights, apart from a single one with four lights, divided by mullions with simple hollow mouldings. The larger groundfloor windows have transoms two thirds of the way up. The lights are leaded in rectangles. The fenestration, particularly on the Star Lane façade, is what Pevsner would call ‘wilful’: the windows on the upper floor do not line up with those on the groundfloor, and there is a single four light window, while all the rest are three, under the larger gable on the Star Lane façade. This rather adds to the attraction of the building rather than detracting from it. It is perhaps a deliberate reflection of a pre-Georgian lack of symmetry or even of the 20th century dictum ‘form following function’. The roof is steeply pitched topped by three stone chimney stacks in a late 17th/early 18th century style.
Of original fittings on the exterior, the original bracket holding the hanging sign survives, and though not as ornate as that on the London Inn, is of merit. The actual sign survived until recently and was only replaced when the building was converted to a Chinese restaurant. The original notices for the ‘bar’, etc. still survive as stained glass inserts in the groundfloor windows. They are attractive. Unfortunately, the original St Paul’s Street wooden door was recently replaced in plate glass – unfortunate, not disastrous, and of course, reversible. The original door survives in Star Lane.
An important feature of the building is the survival of a 13th century arch in the party wall with no. 7 St Paul’s Street. This was only discovered on the demolition of the old ‘Half Moon’ in 1938 (Stamford Mercury, 21 Jan. 1938, p. 12) and was assumed to have been destroyed as demolition proceeded. However, work taking place at no. 7 c.1992 shows it to have survived.
It has not been possible to inspect the inside of the building
When Traylen came to redevelop this site in the late 1930s, his problem was to fill the gap between a street containing extremely important medieval buildings going back to the 13th century and an early 19th century chapel in Star Lane. The problem was compounded by the recent widening of Star lane which made the Star Lane façade much more visible. Contemporary traffic considerations clearly forced the splayed corner on him, which otherwise he almost certainly would not have contemplated. (He was able to achieve a smaller splay at the London Inn.)
The new half Moon is a successful building, successfully turning the corner and joining up two very different streets. It echoes the numerous gables in St Paul’s Street, dating from 15th-17th centuries, though the bays could not be canted out owing to lack of available pavement space. The longer Star Lane sparer façade ties in nicely with the sparser cleaner adjoining building, while the tighter composition on the St Paul’s Street side echoes that street successfully.
London Inn (architect, Henry F Traylen)
The London Inn was built 1939-40 in a Stamford early 17th century vernacular domestic style on a corner site at the junction of St John’s and Castle Streets. It is built in ashlar stone – Clipsham – which, unlike the Half Moon, seems all to have been newly quarried and dressed for the building. It is topped by a steeply pitched Collyweston slate roof with late 17th early 18th century style chimney stacks. The rear walls are of a pale (Stamford?) brick, though the window surrounds here are in stone, and the rear roof is Welsh slate.
The building is of two storeys consisting of two façades and a splayed corner – smaller than that at the Half Moon and not so dominating as the roof is hipped rather than gabled. There are four gabled early 17th century style canted bays, two on each façade. The shorter elevation fronting St John’s Street is of three bays with a northern door and is more intimate in feel than the other one, perhaps reflecting the historic nature of the town it faces towards. The six bay Castle Street elevation is disproportionately longer, the main building alone taking up more than half the length of the street and, together with a small extension and outbuildings, occupies the whole of the north side of Castle Street. This perhaps reflects the newly opened up modernity of Castle Street. This façade has an off centre double doorway up steps, with a tall canted bay on each side. The bulk of this elevation is visually reduced at the western end by a lower roof for its last two or three metres making it look like an extension. This is unfenestrated to the street but has a row of five irregularly set windows on its western wall. Joining this is a short length of wall fronting part of the yard and below again is an outbuilding and garage. The roofs of these, in Collyweston, are set at right angles to each other, the garage with a gable flush with the street and the outbuilding with a parallel ridge roof. All the outbuildings and outer walls are built of ashlar in a severe plain style.
The fenestration of the main building is regular and all the windows have ovolo moulded jams, mullions and lintels, and like the Half Moon are in small leaded rectangles. Some have iron frames, which is typical of the 1930s
There are two very ornate wrought iron brackets holding distinctive hanging signs, one on each façade, and these are original. They are an adornment to the building and alone would deserve protection. These brackets and signs are both more ornate and survive more completely than the sign at the Half Moon.
The building is currently sealed so the interior is not available for inspection.
Traylen’s problem was different here from the Half Moon and he was not infilling and matching between existing historic buildings. This corner in the town had been recently subject to large scale alterations; Castle Street was being widened as an access road to the ill fated and never built inner relief road, and attempts were being made to widen St John’s Street. The new London Inn was therefore incongruously set back on its St John’s Street side to be the first stage of this never completed process. However this remodelling of the street allowed for the insertion of traditional projecting canted bays, rather than the flush bays and gables of the Half Moon. The building could not fit in with anything already adjacent as it fills the whole side of a new street, and what was going to happen to the rest of St John’s Street could not be known at the time. An added difficulty in St John’s Street was the presence next door of an unsympathetic large new garage (‘Motors and Tractors’, now ‘ASK’), less than ten years old and set on the old street line. Even so, Traylen produced a beautifully coherent building that attempted to address the difficulties of the site. The main one was the length and long slope of the Castle Street elevation, which meant that a window sill at knee level in St John’s Street was above head height half way down Castle Street. It is unfair to criticise the resulting greater height and bulk as being out of scale for a 17th century Stamford domestic building, as Traylen was not merely copying historical styles, but reinterpreting them to produce a building that is both sympathetic to the historic nature of the town and reflective of the cleaner and sparser lines of 1930s architecture.
The building works well for the site it occupies and if anything is more coherent than the Half Moon; I feel this to be deliberate. With the Half Moon Traylen was fitting into the jumble of a medieval street, whereas with the London Inn, he had a whole new widened modern street to deal with, and the unknown quantity of what was going to happen with the rest of St John’s Street when widened (which in the event never happened). Integrity and coherence was therefore much more important here and I feel Traylen has successfully addressed this problem
The two buildings, the London Inn and the Half Moon, are both extremely successful essays of the 1930s in building sympathetically in an historic town and establishing a distinct style that helped define the decade. The flexibility of the style is shown by the differences between the two buildings.
I feel that both buildings are of a quality to be placed at grade II on the statutory list of historic building. Their quality merits the added protection against demolition and unsympathetic alteration that listing would confer.
John F H Smith.
15 December 2009
LONDON INN, St John’s Street,
HALF MOON INN, St Paul’s Street,
by the architect
HENRY FRANCIS TRAYLEN, FRIBA, FSA, (1874-1947)
in support of an application for listed building status.
Henry Francis Traylen
Career.
Date of birth: 18 March 1874
Date of death: 5 July 1947
H F Traylen, born in Leicester, was the son of John Charles Traylen (1845-1907 and came to Stamford in 1884 after his father bought the Stamford architectural practice of Browning, father and son, in 1881. (Edward Browning, 1816-1882)
1884-1891, educated Stamford School.
1891-5, articled to his father.
1894, passed qualifying exams for the Royal Institute of British Architects.
1895-c.1900, assistant at the Leicester Architectural practice of Everard and Pick,
1895-c.1899, attended Peterborough and Leicester Colleges of Art.
1899, became Associate Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA)
1901, awarded RIBA Silver Star for measured drawings of Burghley House. (Originals in Stamford Museum.)
In these early years he also spent some time as assistant to the Surveyor at Windsor Castle (a family friend) and two years at the Admiralty, where he spent much of his time inspecting the chapels of the shore stations of the Royal Navy
Returned to Stamford, because of his father’s ill health, and worked with him until his death in 1907.
1906, became partner, the practice being known as Traylen & Son.
1907-1921/2, continued practice alone.
Succeeded father as Surveyor of Ecclesiastical Dilapidations in the archdeaconries of Oakham and Lincoln (these refer only to parsonages.)
1908, took on as assistant, Frederick James Lenton (1888-1960).
1921/2, Lenton, who had served as a lieutenant in the First World War, became a partner, and practice thereafter became Traylen & Lenton (continues today as W J Hemmings.)
1922, became Fellow of Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA)
1927, elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) in recognition of his antiquarian studies in Stamford. Became its local secretary for Lincolnshire and Rutland
c.1917-1947, secretary and treasurer, Rutland Archaeological Society
1930s, Local secretary for the Ancient Monuments Act under HM Office of Works
1939-1944, President of the Northants, Beds. and Hunts. Association of Architects.
1939-1945, during Second World War, appointed by Ministry of Works as its ‘architect responsible for the general supervision of the repair of ancient monuments, churches and historic buildings damaged through enemy action’.
1945, retired from Traylen and Lenton.
Works.
A long, but probably not exhaustive, list of works compiled by this author from various sources is deposited in Stamford Museum; the major sources for this being the ‘Jubilee Book’ (1935) of E S Bowman & Son, Stamford, HFT’s photographic albums and lists in the British Architectural Library.
Though Traylen specialised in ecclesiastical work, in the period between his father’s death and World War One his practice was mixed and included many secular buildings. Among these are:
Apethorpe: cottages, almshouses and the New Inn (now King’s Head) 1913. Further details of his work at Apethorpe can be found in his article in the Architectural Review for April 1924.
1911, Thornhaugh Hall
1911, Stamford, S side of Priory Road, houses, recommended (but misattributed) by Pevsner (1st edtn, 1964) as ‘nicely placed and grouped’.
1911, Stamford, 2 houses, St Paul’s Street, ‘South Lawn’ and ‘Greyfriars’
1913, Wansford, house
His pre-war church work, apart from many restorations and minor works such as reredoses, desks, etc. included:
1902, Wansford, new chancel, (with his father)
1904, High Barnet, restoration of church
1910 and pre-1914(?) Ketton, lychgate and new vestry
1911-12, Groby, Leics. new chancel and its furnishings
1913, Stamford, major restoration of tower and spire of St Mary’s
Other tower and spire restorations are: Duddington (1907), Braybrooke (1914), Deeping St James (1914), Whittlesea (1914), Easton (1915).
During the War he, like many other architects, Traylen had a lean time and, as his son Michael claimed, became little more than a clerk of works supervising the erection of temporary buildings for the Ministry of Defence. The war over, Traylen recovered his career by designing a large number of war memorials: e.g. Broad Street Stamford, village crosses at Apethorpe, Easton-on-the-Hill, churchyard crosses at Belton (Rutland), Collyweston, Thornhaugh, Werrington, lychgate at Weston (Lincs) and many other memorials: panels, tablets, lychgates, doorways throughout the east of England.
After the War and his partnership with Fred Lenton, Lenton tended to concentrate on secular buildings and Traylen on churches, and his obituary in the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries states ‘All the Stamford churches and many others up and down the country, particularly in Northamptonshire and Rutland, bear evidence of his work.’ However, there was one exception to this division of labour: Stamford’s historic buildings. He became their champion and was a forceful advocate, protecting, recording and rebuilding in a sympathetic style if demolition was inevitable. For example, in 1934 he weighed in strongly against the inspectorate of the Office of Works, when they declared that nothing of historic value had been found during the demolition of the mound of Stamford castle, now the bus station. Traylen’s photographs of the castle keep discovered during demolition (copies in Stamford museum) disprove this! He was also instrumental in moving a threatened historic doorway from 10 High Street to the only remaining upstanding part of the castle (where it survives today). Similarly, he was behind the preservation of the threatened 17th century building behind the Stamford Mercury offices. It was re-erected on the edge of the bus station fronting Sheep Market, and although his name is not mentioned in the work, a measured drawing by him survives and the Tudor arched heads to the doorways on the bus station side of the building are distinctive and typical of his work. He also saved the 1845 monumental arch during the widening of Wharf Road in 1937 by repositioning it parallel to the street. It survived then and also the recent redevelopment of the site. In 1938 he saved a 17th century bay from a demolished house in St Leonard’s Street and moved it to Barnack to front the house of the artist Wilfrid Wood. It also survives. During the 1930s therefore, Traylen was what we today would call a conservation architect and way ahead of his time. This sensitivity is also reflected in his major ecclesiastical project in Stamford in the interwar period, the extension of c.1200 Stamford School Chapel, the former St Paul’s Church, in 1929-30.
His love of Stamford’s vernacular 17th century domestic buildings showed itself in the many lectures he gave on this subject, in the Stamford area and at the Society of Antiquaries in London, so it was natural that when demolition in Stamford’s town centre was unavoidable, Traylen, when he got the contract, rebuilt in a sympathetic style that also happened to be his favourite. This happened twice in Stamford, both public houses, in 1938 and 1939, and they define Stamford architecturally in the 1930s. The former Half Moon Inn at the corner of Star Lane and St Paul’s Street and the London Inn, at the corner of St John’s Street and Castle Street, are both products of Traylen’s sympathetic handling of difficult situations. The results are clearly of the 1930s and they are both fine, but underrated buildings, and worthy of placing at grade II on the statutory List of Historic Buildings. 1930s buildings are still not given the consideration they deserve and without protection, demolition or unsympathetic alteration can easily happen to the best of them.
Half Moon Inn (architect, Henry F Traylen)
Built 1938 in a Stamford early 17th century vernacular domestic style. The two street frontages of the building are of local Lincolnshire ashlar limestone, topped with a Collyweston slate roof. Though all the visible frontages are in traditional materials, the invisible side and rear walls are of brick and the rear roof slopes Welsh slate. There seems to be some reuse of second-hand stone on the street façades, which gave it a used look even when new. The stone seems to be a mixture, mostly Stamford/Casterton, possibly some Ketton. Most of the window jambs, door frames and coins are of sand/mortar based artificial stone, though some on the St Paul’s Street façade are in natural stone. Where there is no erosion the artificial stone looks quite authentic, but 70 years of rain washing has taken the top surfaces off exposed faces. It can be seen that the stone was specially moulded for this building and made up using coarse sharp sand.
The building consists of a longer Star Lane façade of three bays with an off-centre doorway, the two northern bays having flush gables; a splayed corner bay topped with a gable resting on cyma profile kneeler stones; and a St Paul’s Street façade of three bays with a central doorway and a flush gable over the centre bay. The fenestration is typical domestic 17th century with windows of three lights, apart from a single one with four lights, divided by mullions with simple hollow mouldings. The larger groundfloor windows have transoms two thirds of the way up. The lights are leaded in rectangles. The fenestration, particularly on the Star Lane façade, is what Pevsner would call ‘wilful’: the windows on the upper floor do not line up with those on the groundfloor, and there is a single four light window, while all the rest are three, under the larger gable on the Star Lane façade. This rather adds to the attraction of the building rather than detracting from it. It is perhaps a deliberate reflection of a pre-Georgian lack of symmetry or even of the 20th century dictum ‘form following function’. The roof is steeply pitched topped by three stone chimney stacks in a late 17th/early 18th century style.
Of original fittings on the exterior, the original bracket holding the hanging sign survives, and though not as ornate as that on the London Inn, is of merit. The actual sign survived until recently and was only replaced when the building was converted to a Chinese restaurant. The original notices for the ‘bar’, etc. still survive as stained glass inserts in the groundfloor windows. They are attractive. Unfortunately, the original St Paul’s Street wooden door was recently replaced in plate glass – unfortunate, not disastrous, and of course, reversible. The original door survives in Star Lane.
An important feature of the building is the survival of a 13th century arch in the party wall with no. 7 St Paul’s Street. This was only discovered on the demolition of the old ‘Half Moon’ in 1938 (Stamford Mercury, 21 Jan. 1938, p. 12) and was assumed to have been destroyed as demolition proceeded. However, work taking place at no. 7 c.1992 shows it to have survived.
It has not been possible to inspect the inside of the building
When Traylen came to redevelop this site in the late 1930s, his problem was to fill the gap between a street containing extremely important medieval buildings going back to the 13th century and an early 19th century chapel in Star Lane. The problem was compounded by the recent widening of Star lane which made the Star Lane façade much more visible. Contemporary traffic considerations clearly forced the splayed corner on him, which otherwise he almost certainly would not have contemplated. (He was able to achieve a smaller splay at the London Inn.)
The new half Moon is a successful building, successfully turning the corner and joining up two very different streets. It echoes the numerous gables in St Paul’s Street, dating from 15th-17th centuries, though the bays could not be canted out owing to lack of available pavement space. The longer Star Lane sparer façade ties in nicely with the sparser cleaner adjoining building, while the tighter composition on the St Paul’s Street side echoes that street successfully.
London Inn (architect, Henry F Traylen)
The London Inn was built 1939-40 in a Stamford early 17th century vernacular domestic style on a corner site at the junction of St John’s and Castle Streets. It is built in ashlar stone – Clipsham – which, unlike the Half Moon, seems all to have been newly quarried and dressed for the building. It is topped by a steeply pitched Collyweston slate roof with late 17th early 18th century style chimney stacks. The rear walls are of a pale (Stamford?) brick, though the window surrounds here are in stone, and the rear roof is Welsh slate.
The building is of two storeys consisting of two façades and a splayed corner – smaller than that at the Half Moon and not so dominating as the roof is hipped rather than gabled. There are four gabled early 17th century style canted bays, two on each façade. The shorter elevation fronting St John’s Street is of three bays with a northern door and is more intimate in feel than the other one, perhaps reflecting the historic nature of the town it faces towards. The six bay Castle Street elevation is disproportionately longer, the main building alone taking up more than half the length of the street and, together with a small extension and outbuildings, occupies the whole of the north side of Castle Street. This perhaps reflects the newly opened up modernity of Castle Street. This façade has an off centre double doorway up steps, with a tall canted bay on each side. The bulk of this elevation is visually reduced at the western end by a lower roof for its last two or three metres making it look like an extension. This is unfenestrated to the street but has a row of five irregularly set windows on its western wall. Joining this is a short length of wall fronting part of the yard and below again is an outbuilding and garage. The roofs of these, in Collyweston, are set at right angles to each other, the garage with a gable flush with the street and the outbuilding with a parallel ridge roof. All the outbuildings and outer walls are built of ashlar in a severe plain style.
The fenestration of the main building is regular and all the windows have ovolo moulded jams, mullions and lintels, and like the Half Moon are in small leaded rectangles. Some have iron frames, which is typical of the 1930s
There are two very ornate wrought iron brackets holding distinctive hanging signs, one on each façade, and these are original. They are an adornment to the building and alone would deserve protection. These brackets and signs are both more ornate and survive more completely than the sign at the Half Moon.
The building is currently sealed so the interior is not available for inspection.
Traylen’s problem was different here from the Half Moon and he was not infilling and matching between existing historic buildings. This corner in the town had been recently subject to large scale alterations; Castle Street was being widened as an access road to the ill fated and never built inner relief road, and attempts were being made to widen St John’s Street. The new London Inn was therefore incongruously set back on its St John’s Street side to be the first stage of this never completed process. However this remodelling of the street allowed for the insertion of traditional projecting canted bays, rather than the flush bays and gables of the Half Moon. The building could not fit in with anything already adjacent as it fills the whole side of a new street, and what was going to happen to the rest of St John’s Street could not be known at the time. An added difficulty in St John’s Street was the presence next door of an unsympathetic large new garage (‘Motors and Tractors’, now ‘ASK’), less than ten years old and set on the old street line. Even so, Traylen produced a beautifully coherent building that attempted to address the difficulties of the site. The main one was the length and long slope of the Castle Street elevation, which meant that a window sill at knee level in St John’s Street was above head height half way down Castle Street. It is unfair to criticise the resulting greater height and bulk as being out of scale for a 17th century Stamford domestic building, as Traylen was not merely copying historical styles, but reinterpreting them to produce a building that is both sympathetic to the historic nature of the town and reflective of the cleaner and sparser lines of 1930s architecture.
The building works well for the site it occupies and if anything is more coherent than the Half Moon; I feel this to be deliberate. With the Half Moon Traylen was fitting into the jumble of a medieval street, whereas with the London Inn, he had a whole new widened modern street to deal with, and the unknown quantity of what was going to happen with the rest of St John’s Street when widened (which in the event never happened). Integrity and coherence was therefore much more important here and I feel Traylen has successfully addressed this problem
The two buildings, the London Inn and the Half Moon, are both extremely successful essays of the 1930s in building sympathetically in an historic town and establishing a distinct style that helped define the decade. The flexibility of the style is shown by the differences between the two buildings.
I feel that both buildings are of a quality to be placed at grade II on the statutory list of historic building. Their quality merits the added protection against demolition and unsympathetic alteration that listing would confer.
John F H Smith.
15 December 2009
