Now that the Lyric have completed the latest round of expansion and building works, they are looking to overhaul the main auditorium and studio spaces. They have asked us to be involved in consultations which will commence in the New Year. This is obviously important to the Hammersmith Society which played such an important role in saving the theatre from destruction back in the 1970s.

H & F ArtsFest this year is taking place between 3 and 11 June : Events in Lyric Square and elsewhere. Visit  www.hf-artsfest.com

London Festival of Architecture for West London kicks off with an exhibition and launch at the St Paul’s Church Centre on Tuesday 20 June. The theme is Memory and there will be various events, building visits and guided walks over the following two weeks.

Details will be viewable from next week at www.westlondonlink.com or www.hammersmithlondon.co.uk  where you can also find information about HammersmithBID’s programme of Summer Events in Lyric Square.

Cineworld in King Street have finally announced the formal closure to make way for the Town Hall Redevelopment Scheme. This will close in Mid. April.

To many of us this will be a sad loss with many family memories. A small replacement cinema complex is promised as part of the later phase of the Town Hall scheme. In the meantime, we will have no local cinema and Riverside Studios is not due to re-open for a couple of years.

Our day to day work of monitoring and commenting on planning applications continues relentlessly. Recent and current schemes include Savoy Circus (Student Housing) - turned down by the Planning and Development Committee in February in spite of officer support : Proposals for Latymer Upper School  Boathouse, St Paul’s Girls School, Cambridge House, Auriol Road, Dimes Place, the Walkabout site, the Triangle site and many others . . . There has been a focus on several applications for tall Telephone Masts by mobile phone providers : In themselves they sound relatively harmless – except where sited in front of Listed Buildings - until you realise they also require up to three large metal cabinets on the footway nearby. Fortunately planning officers agree with our view and those of other groups that the siting of these on public footways is unacceptable. The suspicion is that the companies do not want to pay the tall buildings owners (where they should be mounted) for putting them there.

Bush Theatre

The theatre has got approval and funding to undertake some alterations and a small extension. The theatre will close shortly and hopes to re-open at the beginning of 2017.

Information can be found at : www.bushtheatre.co.uk/our-plans

Following on from my previous brief report (7 November 2015), some of your Committee (with Committee Members from the Hammersmith and Fulham Historic Buildings Group) have attended two consultation meetings with the management of the Dorsett Hotel and their consultants who are designing the new scheme for this building which sits between the hotel and the O2 Empire Theatre.

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Destination, Creation and inclusion

The Council have published this draft strategy and are seeking comments before the end of January. The report can be accessed here. The Hammersmith Society is currently assembling its response.

Riverside Studios

There were worrying reports in the Evening Standard and local news bulletins before Christmas, suggesting that there were problems with the funding of the fit out of the replacement studios which are due to re-open in 2017.

The Hammersmith Society strongly supports the return of the Studios in its new home and format. You can see the layout of the new premises at www.riversidestudios.co.uk

Unfortunately William Burdett-Coutts and Guy Hornsby are both out of the country presently so I have been unable to get their comments : A meeting is being arranged with them on their return. Continue reading →

In the next few weeks, you can expect to see the closing of the Cineworld Cinema in King Street. Many have used this for all our years of living in Hammersmith. This will mark the commencement of the Town Hall/King Street Regeneration Project. The revised and generally more popular mixed use scheme was approved back in November 2013. It will be a phased scheme providing replacement offices for the Council where the cinema is now, about 200 new residential units, a new public square with shops, restaurants and a new Curzon cinema. No doubt there will be publicity and more specific information on the programming of the project.  Watch this space!

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I am delighted to announce that the local artist Ben Johnson has agreed to be our second Annual Honorary Member.

Last year its was Annette Albert. Hopefully Ben is known to most of you and he has an international reputation. He has lived in Hammersmith for more years than he cares to remember with Sheila his wife, and has a studio both at his home in Hammersmith Mall (usually open as part of Open Studios) and in Dalling Road which he shares with Peter Blake. He does extraordinary super realistic pictures, painstakingly crafted and his most famous are probably his views of Liverpool, Jerusalem and Hong Kong. He is currently working on a fantastic painting of the Alhambra Palace and other Muslim buildings. He currently has a major retrospective exhibition ’Spirit of Place’ in Southampton City Art Gallery. He has done much to promote and support Hammersmith.

For more details of Ben’s extraordinary work, visit www.benjohnsonartist.com

Best wishes

Tom Ryland
Chairman
The Hammersmith Society

Campaigning for over 50 years