Hammersmith, Greater London

Another Howard family living in Hammersmith

My mother, Phyllis Howard Penn, was born in Kensington and had a brother Jack, his wife Ethel, their son, John Desmond Howard, his wife, Eileen and their son, John, who lived on Claybrook Road. I met them all for the first time in 1958. I was again in Hammersmith in 2001, while on a tour of the British Isles,... [more]

Memories of War - The Forgotten Casualties (1) - by Patricia Bolter

I am entering these memories on behalf of my mother in law - Patricia Ross (nee Bolter)

Running to meet Dad, just a young man, in uniform for the first time coming home to show us in pride. Providing for the family had been difficult, even tried sweeping snow. I have listened to "The Little Boy That Santa... [more]

The Howard family at Hammersmith and Barnes

My Great-Great-Grandad, Henry Howard, lived in the early 1800’s - a time of great rural depression - and so he left his Devon home to look for work in London with the result that several generations of my family lived in the Hammersmith area.

The story is that he walked all the way. No doubt the stage coach... [more]

Down the Thames Photographic Memories

The photographer looks west from Hammersmith Bridge along Lower Mall, a good jumble of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century building, including the well-known Doves pub. Beyond the pier is Upper Mall where William Morris lived from 1878 to 1896, naming his Georgian terrace house, number 26, Kelmscott House after his country house in Oxfordshire.

London Living Memories

Immediately north of the Town Hall there used to be a small park or square. This disappeared when the Town Hall extension was built in 1971-75, its seven storeys uncompromisingly at odds with the old town hall building: architectural bad manners or boldly innovative, depending on your point of view. Beyond is King Street, where the single-storey gabled building went in the 1990s for... [more]

Down the Thames Photographic Memories

We meet Bazalgette later at the Embankment in central London; seen here from the Barnes bank towpath, his suspension bridge has a 420-foot main span, and the towers are finished with French-style pavilion roofs, all in sheet iron. Beyond the left tower are the tower blocks of the Queen Caroline Estate, and to the right the BBC's Riverside Studios. ... [more]