Chairman’s Annual Report 2024
Click on the image to open the pdf

Attached is this year’s Chairman’s Annual Report, reviewing the key activities of the Society, plus a look at emerging trends in Hammersmith.

Subjects include:

• Royal Masonic Hospital
• Earls Court
• Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA)
  • 181 Talgarth Road, M&S & 2 Queen Caroline St.
• Town Centre Masterplan / SPD
• Transport
  • Hammersmith Bridge
  • Roundabout consultations
• The Society
  • Prof. Hans Haenlein’s retirement
  • Committee changes & recruitment
  • Hammersmith Weekly

The agenda, accounts and other AGM information are on the dedicated 2024 AGM page.

Community Schools Programme – Avonmore Primary School  and flats as proposed

As advertised in our diary and mentioned in recent news, the council consulted on its proposals for a new Avonmore Primary School in the first week of October via three events: two in-person at the current school in Avonmore Road, and one online. We attended the two in-person events, and noted that they were quiet.

Residents were also invited to comment via the council’s website. The council say that a hundred people responded, which included us as attendees, and we noted the survey did no more than provide a comment box, lacking specific questions.

We supported our affiliate Avonmore Residents Association (ARA) in their running of an independent and much more specific consultation to enable residents to have their say. 102 individuals responded, and of these 46 also provided their comments.

The quantitative survey results are clear: by a large margin the majority of residents are ‘concerned’ or ‘highly concerned’ on each of a dozen specific issues, including those relating to residential amenity and loss of public land which we’ve raised in the past.

Avonmore Consultation – Feedback

Equally importantly, the vast majority (>80%) agree that the council has not consulted adequately and further, that its claims of majority public support can’t be substantiated. The full background to the building on school land issue can be found in our education section.

The Origin and Possible Future of Hammersmith & West London College by Hans Haenlein
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Under the banner ‘Taking a View’,  from time to time, we’re pleased to publish articles by members on a subject of their choice, which they believe will be interesting to the wider membership.

In this article, our president, Professor Hans Haenlein, updates us on an issue close to his heart: Hammersmith & West London College, both from an architectural but as importantly, a topical Further Education point of view, tracing its origins back to the Arts & Crafts movement and William Morris.

If you have an article you would like to be considered, please contact .
Articles are unedited personal viewpoints, and may not always represent the views of the Society

North West London panorama from Olympia, March 2023 (click for larger image)

On a brisk March morning, we looked at the new West Hall music venue, the most advanced of the structures being built at Olympia, and viewed some of the rest of the site. As you can see, it’s still a major construction site and will be for the next couple of years.  From the roof, we could see the theatre building now coming out of the ground, other parts of the site pictured below, and a wide swathe of North West London. Below we take a detailed look at the tall buildings on the horizon.

The music venue is substantial, holding c. 4000, with easy loading access immediately to the side of what will become the stage (left of photo). Of particular interest is the design and construction of the façade, to keep any noise emanating to a minimum, bearing in mind the existing residential buildings in Blythe road opposite. The capacity makes it twice the size of the O2 Empire, and comparable to the Apollo – though that’s usually seated these days – in the guise of the Hammersmith Odeon it took around 5000 standing.

Keeping to the theme of the entertainment and hospitality, the Emberton House theatre school foundations can be seen being built at the Western end of the former Maclise road car park, of which only the (listed) outside shell remains, plus the hotel foundations on the side nearest the railway. Operators for all venues are now established, so they will be able to open for business once construction is complete – phased from next year to early/mid 2025. Click on any of the images below for larger versions.

Olympia energy centre

Olympia March 2023 – The Sky Garden

Olympia March 2023 – West Hall music venue façade

Olympia March 2023 – inside the West Hall music venue

Olympia March 2023 – View from within the new office building on Hammersmith Road

Olympia March 2023 – behind the façade of the Emberton House school and hotel (formerly the multi storey car park)

Olympia March 2023 – behind the façade of the Emberton House school and hotel (formerly the multi storey car park)

Olympia March 2023 – View across the roof of the new West Hall music venue

Tall Buildings

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:

Hammersmith School of Art and Building
[ Illustration: Roger Warry : H&F HBG ]

The college buildings together with their boundary wall are listed Grade II by Historic England, under the original title ‘Hammersmith School of Building and Arts and Crafts’, and sits in the Coningham & Lime Grove conservation area.  The site also contains about a dozen mature trees, including a mulberry.

The buildings are now up for sale as the college is rationalising to their other site in Stratford by the end of next year. Allsop are marketing the two acre Lime Grove site, and indicating potential for continuing educational use, but there appear few safeguards against inappropriate (over)development.

We could go on to use many of the same words contained in our popular recent article on the Royal Masonic Hospital similarly on the market for redevelopment, which, as well as being a hospital, was also partly an educational institution for nurse training. Instead, here we reproduce an article from 2006, written for H&F Historic Buildings Group by our president Prof. Hans Haenlein, who has the additional distinction of having been a student of architecture at the college from 1955-1960.  Firstly, some local context:

The origin of Hammersmith &West London College in Gliddon Road W14 is firmly rooted in the history of the London County Council at the end of the 19th century, and the actions of Architect William Lethaby (1857 – 1931) who was appointed in 1894 as the LCC’s Inspector to its Technical Education Board. William Lethaby’s dominant role in the Arts and Crafts movement, his friendship with William Morris, a Hammersmith resident, as well as with his connections with the Weimar Bauhaus through Walter Gropius and Hermann Muthesius, provided a unique and strong European foundation for the LCC’s setting up of Hammersmith College of Art and Building in the late 1890s in Lime Grove. This in turn was the foundation of H&WL College.

The Council is struggling to finance the upkeep of its school estate, a portfolio which includes over forty primary schools.  Limited funds have been available since the government Building Schools for the Future programme was terminated in 2010, and in March last year the Council introduced a “Community Schools Programme”, proposing to finance the improvement works by the building of affordable housing on school grounds. The programme starts with Flora Gardens and Avonmore Primary Schools.

Flora Gardens School Site

We are concerned at the direction of this policy: the unquestionable priority of good public education facilities does not justify the loss of public open space.

Public open space is sacred, it is a rare and precious commodity, and the acceptance of a practice which permanently removes the open space to alleviate a temporary financial shortfall is a mistake: it erodes the quality of our urban surroundings to the detriment of the public realm, and removes potential sites for future social facilities such as youth clubs and provision for the elderly, but also removes spare capacity essential to accommodate the likely increase in space requirements arising from the current review of school standards.