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(AGM Photos: Franco Chen. Click for full-size versions)
We were delighted to announce our 2024 Awards at the AGM at 245 Hammersmith Road on Monday 30th September. The Awards were introduced by vice-chairman Richard Winterton and kindly presented by the Deputy Mayor, cllr. Daryl Brown. Members and supporters were provided excellent hospitality for which we would like to thank the 245 staff, committee and member volunteers.
Award details and the associated narrative are posted on our 2024 Awards page together with a link to the updated spreadsheet of all Awards since 1990, and matching interactive Awards map. More AGM photos and the administrative documents are posted on the dedicated 2024 AGM page.
This year there were no suitable nominations for the main Environment Award, which is probably the result of limited major project starts during the pandemic. The projects of recent Environment Award winners had started before the pandemic, completing in the last year or two.
In keeping with a tradition that started in 2015 with The Dorsett, and continued through The Palladium in 2022 and The Hoxton in 2023 adjacent, we had another winner close by, on the opposite corner to The Lawn, The Defectors Weld, winning a Nancye Goulden Award for its newly restored facades.
We broke the recent run of Jane Mercer guerrilla gardening awards this year with no nominations, but we’re pleased to see previous winners still going strong. It’s notable that the most popular picture on our Instagram a month ago was the properly permeable low cost ‘hoggin’ tree pit shown adjacent, a welcome addition to the Hammersmith streetscape, and something we’ve long campaigned for in preference to the council’s default, asphalt, helpfully despatched by last year’s Jane Mercer winners in several spots around the Askew Road. Wooden spoons were awarded to the council in four of the last eleven years for poor asphalt tree pits.
Our second Nancye Goulden award this year was for landscaping associated with the White City area regeneration. There are a number of excellent examples between and around the new buildings which significantly improve the streetscape. We particularly noted the space between the Ed City building and the new home of L’Oreal at Gateway Central – a popular lunchtime retreat.
In the last couple of years, there had been few candidates for the Tom Ryland Award for Conservation, but happily the tide turned this year, and we had three! We awarded the Ravesncourt Park Tea House for the council’s careful restoration, and the well-known Leaning Lady statue, restored through the efforts of affiliate SPRA, Heritage of London Trust and the council.
Wooden spoons were awarded for:
This year our guest speaker was Sally Prothero, chair of the planning and conservation working group of the London Historic Parks & Gardens Trust, which aims to increase knowledge and appreciation of parks, squares, community gardens, cemeteries and churchyards in London. Her illustrated talk, London’s parks and open spaces at risk, focussed on their work in reviewing planning proposals with a view to protecting London’s green spaces from harmful development, including familiar subjects to us, such as 5G masts. She talked in detail about the particular case study of the grade II* listed Victoria Tower Gardens, adjacent to the Palace of Westminster, where it’s been proposed to build the UK’s controversial Holocaust Memorial and learning centre for some time. In summary “Right idea, Wrong place” due to historic covenants, the setting of the existing Buxton Memorial Fountain, and the large percentage of space proposed to be consumed.
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