Hammersmith
Hammersmith photos (18 available)
Hammersmith maps (2 available)
Map of London
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
Personalised maps
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Hammersmith books (16 available)
- 12 photos on Hammersmith appear in 2 Frith books - View photos of Hammersmith
- Read extracts and see photos from these books on Hammersmith and London
Hammersmith memories
Read and share memories of Hammersmith and London inspired by Frith photos
The Howard family at Hammersmith and Barnes
My Great-Great-Grandad, William 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 fare was beyond the means of an unemployed labourer. He found work constructing railways which at this time were spreading rapidly all over the country. He may have found lodgings in North London, perhaps in Camden with either his brother or his cousin George Howard. Later he moved to the Hammersmith area and he married in his early twenties. He had (at least) ...read more here
Contributed by John Howard Norfolk
London memories
The Howard family at Hammersmith and Barnes
My Great-Great-Grandad, William 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 fare was beyond the means of an unemployed labourer. He found work constructing railways which at this time were spreading rapidly all over the country. He may have found lodgings in North London, perhaps in Camden with either his brother or his cousin George Howard. Later he moved to the Hammersmith area and he married in his early twenties. He had (at least) ...read more here
A memory of Hammersmith contributed by John Howard Norfolk
Underground -
When a was a small girl my parents used to take me to visit my Grandparents, in Kensington where they lived at No. 29 Kelso Place. As the underground trains pass deep under the houses there, I was often to be found in their sitting room laying on the floor with an ear pressed against the carpet listening for the deep rumbling noise! I also remember my parents taking me into one of the large Department stores in the High Street, Derry & Toms, to see Father Christmas. I still have the photo taken of myself with 'him' receiving a present.
A memory of Kensington contributed by Christine Capon
Our local church - St Johns
WE LIVED IN FARM LANE FULHAM SW6, IN A LOVELY O'L PREFAB. OUR LOCAL CHURCH WAS ST JOHN'S.
A memory of Fulham contributed by MARGARET YOUNG
Extracts From Hammersmith & London books
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.
An extract from from"Down the Thames Photographic 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 a four-storey neo-Georgian building.
An extract from from"London Living 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.
An extract from from"Down the Thames Photographic Memories".
The Thames is now flowing into London proper, and we reach Hammersmith, with its monumentally-scaled iron bridge. This replaced William Tierney Clark’s suspension bridge of 1827, a smaller version of which survives across the Thames at Marlow. The current one, now painted a tasteful green with architectural ornament picked out in gold, is by Sir Joseph Bazalgette and is dated 1887.
An extract from from"Down the Thames Photographic Memories".
The scale of buildings with nothing over three to four storeys has now been rudely interrupted by the 1970s
seven-storey extension to the Town Hall behind the 1930s brick building (centre). Left of it is the appalling 1960s
Vencourt Hotel tower. At the right is the boathouse of the Furnivall Sculling Club, while the warehouse beside it
(far right) was demolished for riverside flats in the 1980s.
An extract from from"London Living Memories".