A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



hall, has been destroyed ; and a solar wing of two 

 stories on the south, ihe outlines of which can still be 

 traced. No early details of the interior remain 

 except parts of two trusses of the hall roof, of the 

 hammer-beam type, 19 ft. span, with moulded wall- 

 plates. The nest two houses, which originally formed 

 one house, are of a little later date, being of the 15th 

 century. The hall appears to have been in the 

 upper story which projects over the street. On the 

 overhanging gable above the archway on the south is 

 the date 1729 in the plaster, but the posts supporting 

 the beam of the arch have 15th-century moulded 

 capitals supporting the curved angle brackets. 



851. 





To the west ofQu 

 are the Biggin Almshi 

 the 17th century. They 

 round a small courtyard, c 

 a wooden colonnade form 

 contains a small set of rooi 

 of two stories and an attic 



Street, 

 i, built 



pi; 



different dates. 



Thire is a Corn Exchange in th 



iear the River Hiz, 

 n the early part of 

 it of four wings built 

 west side of which is 

 cloister. Each wing 

 each floor. They are 

 It of timbe 



They have been much altered 



The new town hall in BranJ Street is dated 

 This has superseded an older one built in 

 1 840. Among other public building) may be noticed 

 the Mechanics' Institute and public subscription 

 library adjoining the old town hall. There is a 

 large infirmary called the North Herts and South Beds 

 Infirmary in the Bedford Road, which was erected in 

 1 840. The Home for girls of weak and defective 

 intelligence, in the Triangle, was built in 1893. 

 The Girls' Grammar School, which was built at 

 the cost of £13,000, was opened in July 1908. The 

 Boys' Grammar School is a continuation of the Free 

 School founded by John Mattock in 1650 and 

 removed to new buildings about 

 twenty years ago. 



Among the past inhabitants of 

 Hitchin was George Chapman the 

 poet. He is best known as trans- 

 lator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, 

 but also wrote other poetry and 

 plays. In Euthymiae Ra/>iur, or the 

 Tears of Peace, he alludes to having 

 spent his childhood in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Hitchin." William 

 Drage, a believer in astrology and 

 witchcraft, and Maurice Johnson, 

 the antiquary, lived here in the 

 17th century." The 19th cen- 

 tury claims Sir Henry Bessemer, 

 the inventor of a new process for 

 making steel, and Robert Bentley, 

 botanist, who was born here. 

 James Hack Tuke, philanthropist, 

 spent a part of his life at Hitchin. 

 Samuel Lucas, a well-known 

 amateur artist, belonged to an old 

 Hitchin family. Good examples 

 pj p.——- 1| of his art are to be seen in the 

 P [F II town hall at Hitchin and in the 

 f" 1 JLJI British Museum. Frederick Chap- 

 [ *$g£Q man, publisher and originator of 

 the Fortnightly Review, was born in 

 Cock Street in a house said to have 

 belonged to his collateral ancestor 

 George Chapman the poet. 



Hitchin was 

 BOROUGH undoubtedly an im- 

 portant manor and 

 soke before the Conquest, but 

 there is no evidence from the 

 entries in the Domesday Survey 

 that it was a borough. It was 

 probably not till the middle of 

 the 1 2th century, when the Baliols 

 it developed into an inchoate 

 This was the time when so many such 

 i arose in consequence of the prosperity 

 of the wool trade, which enabled the townspeople 

 to purchase rights from the nobles and other land- 

 owners impoverished by the civil wars. The market 

 hitchin was held by prescription, and the right to 

 vas obtained in 1221* By 1268 we 

 : that the borough was farmed to the 

 rent of %\ marks." As we find at the 



were lords, 

 borough." 

 market t 



hold i 

 have evident 

 burgesses at 



<; The present church dale) from this 



e a rebuilding 

 1 such borough 



