Goldhawk Road would have been an attractive boulevard in its day: at the Shepherds Bush end,  a wide street lined with terraced housing, shops at ground level, pubs on every corner, changing as you travel west, to the more sedate, semi-detached villas with front gardens – gardens which were later cut short to make way for a road widening which never took place. Over the years, development has eroded this street consistency but the distinctive scale and style remains.

190-194 Goldhawk Road

On the north side, near the Paddenswick Road roundabout, there are proposals for residential redevelopment on an unusual site at 190-194 Goldhawk Road,  next to the 1930’s style Melville Court flats, a site with a wide frontage and stretching back some 140 metres to the Hammersmith Academy at the rear. The development proposals include a 6-storey block on Goldhawk Road, with 24 flats (50% affordable) and a ground floor commercial unit, and a 2-storey mews terrace of 12 houses at the rear.

Apart from the penthouse, the scale of the front block sits comfortably in its street setting, but the street frontage, with its dominant projecting balconies and pronounced banding, would bring a heavy, dominant presence, out of harmony with the street and belittling the more reticent balconied façade of Melville Court next door. The penthouse proposed for the roof of the block is wholly out of place, its height and its awkward projecting roof an alien feature in the Goldhawk Road streetscape. 

190-194 Goldhawk Road Mews Houses

At ground level a gated access-way under the block leads to the mews housing behind, where you arrive in a more domestic, private world. This is an ingenious design, making  the most of a difficult site, and creating an attractive backwater tucked away from the busy road. The layout is very compact, leading to one or two shortcomings which deserve further consideration:  there appears to be no access to the houses for delivery/removal vehicles, and there is little outdoor recreation space for children or adults – and if there is to be reliance on proximity to public parks, a development contribution should be included towards parks maintenance; noise from comings and goings at the front of the houses is likely to disturb the private gardens of Cathnor Road very close by.

190-194 Goldhawk Road – Model

The mews houses would form a gated community, a satellite area which tends to become isolated from street society – as is evident in the gated communities of Beech Terrace further down Goldhawk Road, or Vinery Way off Brackenbury Road, or Paradise Gardens below Ravenscourt Park station.  Gated access may be essential for these cul-de-sac enclaves, but a means must be found to avoid them becoming isolated from participation in the street and the borough.

The pre-application process played an interesting part in the scheme development: comments at the Design Review Panel led to the current assertive Goldhawk Road frontage  taking the place of the more fitting and restrained design of the earlier proposal.

The scheme will require the demolition of the existing Victorian house which forms part of the road frontage, a building which enjoys protected status from LBHF local listing. Whilst it is reasonably proposed that this loss is outweighed by the benefits of the development, LBHF need to be careful not to undermine the authority of the local listing process.

The Planning application ref is 2023/02581/FUL

Letter to planners