Game of Throwing 20220922

123a King Street

250-252 King Street

Former Brackenbury Arms

Former Nicholas Mee showroom

King Street shop fronts

Little Vegas King St

91 Hammersmith Grove

In recent months we, our members, affiliates and others have noticed an increase in unsympathetic shop fronts or public realm land-grabs adjacent to shops, particularly in King Street, but elsewhere in the borough too. We are of course aware of the plight of the high street, an issue we wrote about in 2019, but the pandemic seems to have accelerated a slip in standards.  The pictures also demonstrate an unfortunate correlation between these slippages, metal roller shutters (with or without graffiti), and some of the better historic buildings, sharpening the discordancy. Shopfronts require the same constraints as rear extensions – ‘subservient to the existing building’.  A strong building presence at ground level – with visible walls between the shop openings – can accommodate a variety of shopfront designs without losing the integrity of the building design.

Some larger chains are showing is that it’s quite possible to build new frontages sympathetically, while maintaining enough corporate branding to meet the business needs, though it’s unclear how much cajoling the various local authorities undertook to achieve these results.  Unfortunately we’re not seeing quite enough of this in parts of Hammersmith – yet.

Tesco and Pret Holland Park Ave

Shoreditch Pret

Paintbox Studios and Coffeeology: Nancye Goulden Award 2019

Longstanding members will recall the Nancye Goulden award we gave to the Nicholas Mee showroom in 2013, a “stylish minimalist modern frontage”, which appeared to be a high point, with the nearby Ginger Pig also awarded in the same year.  In 2019, helping to highlight what can be done in our high streets, we awarded the two adjacent shops shown at the western end of King Street, but the eastern end remains a rather different matter.

Nancye Goulden Award 2013 – The Ginger Pig

Nancye Goulden Award 2013 – Nicholas Mee Aston Martin showroom

A few years after the award, Nicholas Mee sold up, possibly feeling – correctly as it turned out – the zeitgeist turning significantly against car ownership in general, big-engined luxury car ownership in particular, notwithstanding the skilled jobs involved.  The workshop in Wellesley Avenue was also sold, leaving a site that’s been fought over tooth-and-nail since.  These days, the mere suggestion of a car-related enterprise locally may have segments of the population foaming at the mouth, though the residents of Wellesley Avenue probably still reflect fondly on the glamorous metal formerly adorning their neighbourhood. We digress.

World Air Quality October 2022 – IQAir, including H&F and Breathe London data

LBHF Clean Air Neighbourhoods

We expect the council’s Clean Air Neighbourhoods policy to be a well-intentioned and researched policy, with its implications and unintended consequences carefully considered. There are good things in here, such as planting more street trees, improvements to street safety, and some incentives intended to discourage car use. However, on examination, few measures actually relate directly to ‘the name on the tin’ – air quality – and the one that does, only relates to around 12% of the air quality problem in Hammersmith according to Public Heath England’s figures below. This week’s smell of wood-burning stoves reminds us that the main problem here is PM2.5 particulates. Rather than deal with that, this policy would concentrate nitrogen oxide pollution where it’s highest – on main roads.

Welcome to the infamous Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) debate that dare not speak its name – our council knows how toxic that is. Instead it has decided to use a heavy-handed mix of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, deployed with highly inflammatory headline-grabbing phrases such as TOXIC, SILENT KILLER, DEATH, in a decades-old ‘big stick’ approach. The claim of 40,000 UK annual deaths is a misappropriation of the data, which actually relates to life expectancy. Privately the council still uses the term ‘LTN’, and funds them instead of schools, with Section 106 contributions.

Along with a proposed bridge toll, this binary “clean” vs. “dirty” social-media style campaign is beginning to make us look like Fortress Hammersmith, rather than the well-connected borough we appreciate, predicated on the idea that other boroughs wouldn’t think of putting up their barriers similarly… would they?  Hounslow’s so-called South Chiswick Liveable Neighbourhood  is one such controversial and euphemistically named control scheme already on our doorstep, which points to Hammersmith bridge closure as part of the problem.

The wider London picture: LTNs can increase, rather than decrease vehicle miles

Evidence from the controversial South Fulham Traffic, Congestion & Pollution Reduction (TCPR) scheme shows that the policy of diverting traffic can make it worse overall, particularly on main and boundary roads such as the A4, or to places not measured, out of sight and out of mind. This was confirmed recently by widely-reported DfT figures showing that total vehicle miles driven in the ten inner London boroughs that introduced LTNs or equivalent schemes in 2020 rose by an average 11.4% in 2021 vs. 8.9% where they hadn’t. This is one of the reasons the TCPR has had to be extended to the western side of Wandsworth Bridge Road, but the recent extension is already reported to be causing gridlock in Wandsworth itself and on Wandsworth Bridge and New Kings Roads.

Kings College and the council’s own data shows that our backstreets are already as much as 50% less polluted than main roads. Clean Air Neighbourhoods might therefore be seen as a divisive and discriminatory policy addressing the wrong target, by aiming to improve air quality in areas where it’s not a significant problem, and diverting traffic to main roads, where it would worsen the sometimes already sub-standard air quality, slowing the movement of public transport and other traffic, reinforcing last year’s similarly ill-conceived bus lane removals, and concentrating any pollution on those trying to “do the right thing” by using active travel modes – the bus, walking or cycling – or perhaps living alongside. The deeper dive at the foot of the article provides more detail. 

Daily congestion in King St (October 2022)

It’s not very useful claiming that H&F residents will be unaffected, as some councillors have, with oddly mixed messaging, potentially encouraging residents’ car use.  Let’s look past our own noses, and imagine other councils following suit and imposing their own set of rules, having had H&F traffic displaced to them.

Lock-down London would be divided up into a competing patchwork of complicated and differently administered fiefdoms, that no business or occasional visitor would want to, or in many cases be able to, cross – at least at any reasonable level of administration or cost – and Fortress London would become ever more a playground for the super-rich.

This represents a spectacular own goal from a council claiming to be “Doing things with residents, not to them”, and for whom it takes over 3700 words to explain just their South Fulham TCPR scheme (that’s 50% longer than this article, which is hardly short!). Unsurprisingly, the TCPR now has its own 7000-signature petition.

Going electric

In an era rapidly going electric (50% of new vehicles are projected to be electric in 3 years time), rather than the council’s retro big-stick approach, a far more effective policy would involve the carrot of improving public transport from it’s pitiful speeds by ungumming the main roads, and making it cheaper and more accessible, as they do in Germany. TfL has just done the exact opposite.

Instead, this policy would make it worse in the hotspots: the five most polluted spots measured in the 2022 air quality report are Hammersmith Road East/West (HF11/46), The Town Centre, Wood Lane (HF16), and of course the Broadway, all locations where traffic is already largely at a standstill. Amazingly, for a supposed ‘clean air’ policy there appear no exceptions for EV’s; this is actually an anti four-wheel policy – ‘clean air’ is a marketing ploy.

In the month of COP27, the council conflated air quality with climate change in order to ‘make it relevant’, and then casually targeted predetermined usual suspects, fitting a tired and over-politicised narrative. The two don’t always overlap, especially geographically as we wrote before, and sometimes even work in opposition, as described below.  But where the effects of climate change and air pollution do collide is in the ‘global south’ as the map above clearly illustrates, and, by encouraging pollution exports, this policy helps reinforce the situation. Do we want those countries, recently awarded ‘loss and damage’ payments from the developed world for climate change, to need to add loss and damage from our exported air pollution too?

RMH isometric from https://www.ravenscourtparkhospital.info

Earlier this month we met with the new owners of RMH, Telereal Trillium, their planning consultants, Turley, and Trevor Morriss of SSPARC architects appointed for the redevelopment, who you may remember giving a presentation on the Olympia redevelopment at our AGM in 2019.

They gave us a rundown of Telereal Trillium’s background (mainly a large portfolio of former public sector property, a large proportion of which were in the BT and DWP estates, formerly owned by Land Securities). This is not their first listed building redevelopment – the example they gave us was the one on the website, the Grade II listed Tooting Police Station.  As it’s early days, there were no more details available other than that on the website boards, shown above and on their website.

Telereal Trillium describe themselves as an £8 billion family owned property development company owned by the William Pears Group. They say that they are not “operators”, they have moved from being owners to owner/developers recently, and are not currently planning on going further into running buildings.

RMH block plan view

The 80’s block at the back of the site shown in pink adjacent, “Block E”, was suggested as the location for the main redevelopment activities, the rest of the estate is more a case of preserve, enhance and convert into luxury accommodation, with restoration of the surrounding gardens, which is good news.

Discussions with the council started in June, but there have been no formal planning pre-application meetings yet.  We mentioned that we’re extremely keen to engage early, offering our experience and local knowledge on behalf of the wider community.  Meanwhile we’re looking at how National (NPPF), London-wide (London Plan), and borough (Local plan) guidance applies to this project.

The large public spaces in the listed parts of the estate (“Block A”) are where the community use and engagement is critically important.  We discussed possible educational and other uses, but only in outline at this initial stage.

We’re pleased that this important building has an engaged new owner, and look forward to its unique interiors being open for public enjoyment again in an appropriate form. Your suggestions for suitable uses are most welcome.

New Civil Engineer recently reported that the bridge stabilisation has progressed and that specialist concrete has been poured into the cast iron pedestals to prevent them collapsing.  This means that the bridge is safer for the next stage of repair, which we mentioned in the last email. The stabilisation works are scheduled to complete by the end of February 2023.

It’s worth mentioning again that while the funding arrangement for the rebuilding has been determined, actual funds remain scarce, and the long term funding and maintenance model is undecided. The council prefers to package it up so it can be put into a trust and managed at arms length.

The next step is diversion of a gas main at a cost of £5m, and the letting of contracts so that works on the actual major repairs can begin. We have requested copy of the £200k feasibility report into the Foster/COWI temporary bridge to better understand details of the proposals.

There’s been some press and politics around a proposed bridge toll as a way to close the gap in funding for the rebuild, and whether or not residents would be expected to pay. A historic problem with tolls has been that it cost a significant percentage of the actual toll to collect, and with so much cash sloshing around, there was often significant fraud. Newer technology, such as Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) would presumably lessen these overheads, if not the displeasure.

We are grateful to the Barnes Bugle for alerting us to a detailed video from Mott’s explaining the whole process for those interested in the technicalities:

King Street – M&S proposed frontage elevation

Many of you will have been to the exhibition at the Lyric recently to view the proposals and displays.  We exhorted the development team to show full elevations, but the best we achieved at the time were partial CGI images.  They have now come forward with North and East elevations, which are on the consultation website, along with the exhibition boards, and above / below, and appear to be part of a pending planning application. The large towers in the background are the proposed Landmark House, as yet unbuilt, and we believe subject to change of ownership, and therefore possibly design change too.

As you can see, our very approximate CGI in the earlier article was reasonably accurate dimensionally, if not aesthetically, and at 47m, this undistinguished proposal is of alien scale, substantially higher than the Lyric, and a large intrusion on the King St. horizon.  The 15m setback from the street helps reduce this intrusion only marginally, which you can see below.

King Street – M&S elevation, East

More importantly, acceptance at this dimension would set a bulk and height precedent along King St., much as we’ve recently seen used in the 66 Hammersmith Road proposal, especially in the continuing absence of an issued Town Centre Masterplan, or planning brief, a subject on which we repeatedly remind the council is nearly 5 years overdue. We haven’t even mentioned a likely West-East prevailing wind tunnel, increased if others were to follow suit.

Black Bull Tavern 122a Holborn, 1901 [pubwiki.co.uk]

The Black Bull was modelled in the early 19^th century by Obadiah Pulham from Pulham & Son. In Victorian times, this was a well-known Suffolk-based firm specialising in the production of garden ornamentation for prestigious sites across the country and the material used would have been ‘Pulhamite”, a particular blend of artificial stone they had devised.

Brought into London by Thames barge, the bull’s destination was to serve as the sign for the Black Bull coaching inn at 122a Holborn, an establishment mentioned by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit. He adorned the front of that building until 1904 (seen below the second floor window alongside the Black Bull nameplate), when the old inn was demolished to make way for a corner extension to the original Gamages department store. 

Black Bull transitioning to Gamages, 1904, [pubwiki.co.uk]

Reporting this event with some regret as the loss of a favourite destination for American tourists, the New York Times wrote on May 20, 1904: … “the old Black Bull of Holborn was lowered from his perch yesterday, and his retirement from public life marked the demolition of the famous old London inn that bore his name”.

Sir William Bull MP’s offices at 269 King St, bull over entrance [H&F Archives]

But saved from destruction by the Hammersmith MP Sir William Bull, our bull was transported over to King Street and relocated above the entrance of the Georgian terraced offices of the MP’s law firm, then at number 269. There he stood for over half a century until those buildings too were demolished.

Rescued again, he was brought down to earth to be unsuitably positioned head-on, on a plinth in the forecourt of an undistinguished ‘estate-style’ pub called the Ravenscourt Arms, later renamed the Black Bull, built in 1966 on the site next to Vencourt House, now a Premier Inn, at 257 King Street. In recent years, that pub too closed, leaving the Black Bull of Holborn stranded in the tumbleweed, and once more seeking a suitable Hammersmith home.

The Ravenscourt Arms was owned by Charrington, its successor the Black Bull was part of Punch Taverns, but according to the council, current ownership looks to be connected to the hotel adjacent.  Do you know any more?  We, alongside Heritage of London Trust, would like to have him restored, and found a more appropriate home.

The Black Bull in King St. 2022

66 Hammersmith Road – Big Yellow – 2022 proposal

We wrote about this site nearly five years ago, and in summary, our view then was that it was rather overbearing on the listed buildings opposite, and adjacent conservation areas. Since then, Olympia has come along and given us a whole new perspective on large redevelopments in the vicinity. You can see a CGI of their (under construction) theatre block in the foreground.

66 Hammersmith Road – earlier 2017 proposal

The 2017 plans will lapse in November, and though not being pursued, importantly were consented under 2017/04752/FUL a full two years after being lodged. This means that it’s (legally) significantly harder to roll back from such a substantial scale, and goes a long way to explaining why the new proposal bears more than a passing resemblance to the earlier one.

As an aside, we’d urge the planners and developers to spend a little more time meaningfully consulting earlier in the process with LBHF setting a high bar when considering such substantive impacts on the townscape.  Hammersmith Road, like the Town Centre, needs a planning brief so that buildings are not proposed willy-nilly without context. There are several 1980’s blocks along the road where Cadby Hall once stood, and unless forethought is applied, a mish-mash of undistinguished buildings may soon be proposed – notwithstanding the present object – to replace the existing ageing and undistinguished mish-mash. Despite boilerplate sustainability statements, such substantial concrete-and-steel proposals are unlikely to feature as highlights on the council’s Climate Emergency agenda, or tick the boxes of the Architects’ Journal RetroFirst campaign, already in its fourth year. We’re again being “consulted” moments before the public, which begins to look like consultation lip-service, and means that in effect little change can be made.

Architecturally, the expressed external structure introduces an inappropriate visual complexity which at the same time creates a perception of additional bulk at roof level, with an unnecessarily prominent parapet in the sky silhouette.

Close by in the next block is the Grade 2 listed façade of Olympia, soon to be joined by dominant neighbours – the jazzy new theatre on the Olympia west side shown above, and the rooftop hotel on the east side.  The busyness of the proposed façade of No. 66 would add to this discord.  CGI images from a viewpoint west of No. 66, and incorporating Olympia G theatre and the retained Olympia façade, would be an instructive exercise in considering the contribution the proposals would bring to the setting of the listed building.

Some good news!

The proposed building is set back a little more than the 2017 version shown, and is not significantly larger. It’s not painted bright yellow, but the developers might like to consider just how far a little red goes.  The public realm is better served by the slightly improved landscaping, and the detailing of the building is better.  Access via Blyth Road is a little better than as currently via the end of Lyons Walk, which allows the latter to be better landscaped (by LDA design), and coordinated with Olympia adjacent. 

There is some community space, which, given the Lyons and LEO heritage, might best serve as a computer club or similar technology education facility, suitably themed, perhaps involving an association with local schools such as Avonmore primary?  The location around the LEO plaque itself is planned to be improved, or the plaque better sited – we’re in contact with the LEO Computers Society who are also being consulted.

We requested the developers look at the space around the bus stop adjacent, the pavement around which is currently very cramped, though changes in the cycle lane alongside, post-Olympia, may change all this.

A public consultation exhibition is being held on 5th October – details are in the diary – and there’s a consultation website with a few more images and details. Let us know what you think.

Members of your committee, affiliates and resident groups around two primary schools – Avonmore and Flora Gardens – were concerned to see the revival of an unreconstructed Community Schools Programme on the recent council cabinet agenda.

Community Schools Programme – proposed Avonmore Primary School. Note that most greenery is actually Marcus Garvey Park

The agenda item was in effect crystallising the May 2022 Labour manifesto into council policy. However, we wrote 4 letters to the council and an article on the subject in 2020, highlighting concerns about the proposal to develop school land, and doubted that the policy was either wise or even justified on a number of specific points of planning and development practice.  Furthermore we are aware that other options have been tabled at both locations and rejected by the council.  Early consultations were curtailed by the pandemic, and specific promises were made by the council to pause and continue the conversation before proceeding.

To date, this has not happened, although some undocumented discussions amongst various parties have taken place. Under the circumstances we saw little option but to make a formal deputation to the council meeting, re-iterating community concerns, and making the following points: