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A Bridge over hammersmith

Currently closed for 3 years, hammersmith Bridge is one of London’s most attractive crossings. There’s been a bridge connecting hammersmith and Barnes for nearly 200 years, and ever since the first one was opened in 1827 there have been complaints about its strength. With hammersmith becoming an important agricultural and industrial part of west London there had been an increasing need to add more river crossings. With this in mind the authorities turned to local engineer William Tierney Clark, who’s best known for the Széchenyi Chain Bridge that spans the Danube in Budapest. Even at the start of the work, when the Duke of Sussex blessed the bridge,...

hammersmith Schools for Boys

Renowned actors, sportsmen and musicians have been educated in hammersmith. Earlier this month a group of 30 followed me along the River Thames to learn about some former pupils of Latymer School and st Paul’s School. Latymer Upper School is nearly 400 years old, having been founded in 1624 by Edward Latymer (1557-1627). A prosperous lawyer, he eft part of wealth for the clothing and education of “eight poor boys” from hammersmith. The clothing, which included a doublet, a pair of breeches, a shirt incorporated a red cross on the left sleeve, a pair of woollen stockings and shoes, was to be distributed twice a year on Ascension Day and All Sa...

No Dove Lost

Emery Walker House   During the First World War, if you’d been walking across hammersmith Bridge at night you might have spotted a shifty looking gentleman surreptitiously throwing bits of metal off the bridge and into the River Thames. This mysterious dumper was a disgruntled bookbinder by the name of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, who died 100 years ago this year. As for the metal, they were his collection of Doves Type, a beautifully designed font created with his partner Emery Walker.   In the last years of the 19th century Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) decided to abandon his life as a barrister and become a bookbinder.  With his wif...

The Royal Queens of hammersmith

As we celebrate The Queen’s 70 years on the throne I’ve had a look at other royal connections to my nearby borough of hammersmith.  As you emerge from stamford Brook Underground station, to the left once stood the Queen Charlotte Maternity Hospital, named after the consort of George III, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-strelitz (1744-1818). It’s now in East Acton but when it was in W6, in 1945 Helen Mirren was born there. Appropriately she played Queen Charlotte in the film The Madness of King George. Further east, on the site of the present-day Latimer Prep School once stood Rivercourt House. For 4 years, between 1687 and 1691, it was the home of...

Ancient and Modern

In southeast London lie the remains of what was once a favourite palace of a young King Henry VIII, his father and grandfather. Eltham Palace dates back to the 1300s, when it was given to Edward II. In the 1470s Edward IV had a grand hall built - it was where he spent his last Christmas in 1482 - but by the 1600s this moated manor had gone out of fashion. It took a member of the textile magnates, the Courtaulds, to transform it into a place of luxury, with all the latest designs and gadgetry. For the last 20 years English Heritage have looked after it, and on a sunny spring day it is a glorious site. Eltham Palace is very much a palace of two halve...

A Bit of Bishopsgate

Visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington and, among its many treasures, you’ll find a rare survival of pre-Great Fire architecture from the City of London. Peter Pindar’s house originally stood on Bishopsgate, about where Liverpool street station now stands. When the station was developed the Chairman and Directors of the Great Eastern Railway Company gave it to the museum.  It’s made of oak and dates from around 1600, when merchant Paul Pindar had it built - more of him later. The impressive full-height windows would have originally been glazed, either with imported glass or local greenish glass. The semi-circular window shap...