More from the Golden Mile continues from where my previous post on my walk on Sunday 7th January 1990, Curry’s, Firestone, A Fountain & Kluwer – 1990, ended. This is my final post on this walk.
Adini, 891, Great West Rd, Isleworth, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-12
Just to the west of Syon Lane on the Great West Road in Isleworth is this 1933 Art Deco factory by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners built for William Burnett Chemicals. This was the furthest west of the 1930s commercial buildings on the new road and past it are residential properties in the north of Isleworth and Osterley.
Adini, 891, Great West Rd, Isleworth, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-12
The building is I think still in use by fashion clothing firm Adini. In 2023 Hounslow Council turned down a planning application to develop the site retaining and restoring this locally listed Art Deco building but with two six storey blocks containing 51 flats on the site. The developers appealed and I am not sure of the current state of the proposal.
Softsel, 941, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1h-65
I hadn’t finished with the ‘Golden Mile’ and turned around and walked east back into Brentford along the Great West Road. 941, the occupied by Softsel was another building by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners for cosmetics company Coty.
This building is now the private Syon Clinic.
Steps, 971, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1h-66
Another grand set of steps led up to the factory of Leonard Williams Ltd, who made Packard cars here from 1929. Queensway in 1990 it now leads to DFS Brentford Sofa & Furniture Store, but only these steps remain of the previous building.
Pyrene Building, Westlink House, 981, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1h-51
Built 1929-1930 by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners for Pyrene, makers of fire extinguishers it is Grade II listed. The main windows here had already been altered by 1990.
Pyrene Building, Westlink House, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1h-44
This grand entrance and the gate posts are perhaps the most interesting feature of the building. The building now provides tailor-made office space for companies of all sizes.
Pyrene Building, Westlink House, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1h-44
I still hadn’t quite finished with the Golden Mile, but my final pictures were a set of five pictures of the remarkable former Curry’s HQ at 991 Great West Road which featured in an earlier post – you can see them starting here on Flickr.
Grand Union Canal, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1h-34
I ended my walk by with a final picture looking south from the bridge which takes the Great West Road over the here combined River Brent and the Grand Union Canal before getting away from the noise and dust of the road and walking along the canal towpath to Brentford High Street where I could catch a bus to start my journey home.
Curry’s, Firestone, A Fountain & Kluwer continues from where my previous post about my walk on Sunday 7th January 1990 In Memory of Macleans & Trico – 1990 ended.
Former Curry’s, 991, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-42
Warehouse and offices built in 1935-6 by F E Simpkins as a distribution centre for Curry’s Ltd. Grade II listed in 1994. Curry’s lost their headquarters building when it was taken over during the war to make aircraft parts. But in 1996 they opened a new superstore a few yards down the road at 971, a site where from 1929 Packard Cars were built; it had beenbadly damaged by a V2 in March 1945, but was rebuilt and became an annexe to Sperry Gyroscope until they moved to Bracknell in 1966.
In 1990, 991 Great West Road was Cooper West London Service. After some years of disuse in 2000 it became the offices of JC Decaux.
Gate, Firestone Tyre Factory, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-43
Closed in 1979, the factory was bought by Trafalgar House and demolished during the 1980 August bank holiday to preempt its listing, due to be announced two days later. It was one of the finest buildings designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners and only the second to be opened on the Great West Rd in 1928.
Gate, Firestone Tyre Factory, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-31
Its demolition was widely condemned as an act of architectural vandalism by architectural critics, many of whom would gladly have lain down in front of the bulldozers had they known about it in time. It’s demolition led directly to the listing of at least 150 twentieth century buildings previously ignored, though too many remained unprotected and have been lost.
Many of us felt that Lord Victor Matthews who ordered the instant demolition to avoid listing should have been in some way brought to justice – or at least have his life peerage removed. But nothing was done.
Fountain, Great West Road, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-35
The building at the left of this image is the former Coty Cosmetics Factory at 941 Great West Road from 1932 by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, now Syon Clinic, and to the right an odd structure outside Homebase. This fountain must have been close to the corner of Shield Drive, perhaps to distract attention from the bland and mediocre more recent buildings in the area.
Harlequin Avenue runs north from the Great West Road and is still lined by factories and commercial buildings, few of much architectural interest. Kluwer Publishing was perhaps the exception but this building has since been demolished.
The Gillette building at the corner of the Great West Road and Syon Lane marks the western end of Brentford’s ‘Golden Mile’. To the west of here the land was owned by the Church Commissioners who only permitted residential development in Osterly.
Designed by Sir Banister Flight Fletcher in 1936-7, Gillette continued to make razor blades here until production was moved to Poland in 2006. The tall tower can be seen from miles away in this flat corner of Middlesex.
Plans to convert the building into a hotel and small business park fell through and in 2013 the site was purchased by The Vinyl Factory and made available for filming, at first with four large stages. Plans were approved in 2025 to make more of the site available for filming while preserving the Grade II listed building – and are expected to provide more than 3,400 permanent jobs.
Macleans Toothpaste, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-03
Toothpaste in my youth came as dentifrice, a usually pink powder or block in small tins, around 7 or 8 cm diameter and 2 cm tall, and Macleans had a patent aluminium tin. In my home we only changed to toothpaste in tubes at some time in the 1950s, but we could have been behind the times. And we used Gibbs Dentifrice, not Macleans.
Macleans was begun by a New Zealand born businessman, Alex C. Maclean in 1919, and moved into this splendid new factory on the Great West Road in 1932. The company was bought by Beechams in 1938 and later was swallowed up as a part of GlaxoSmithKline or GSK. You can still apparently get Macleans toothpaste though it bears little relationship to the orginal product and is now produced by Haleon
Macleans, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-04
The centenary of the Great West Road is celebrated in the book The Great West Road: A Centenary History by James Marshall, so far as I know not a relative of mine. “For two miles, from its junction with the North Circular Road and Chiswick High Road to Gillette Corner, a corridor of inter-war factory buildings emerged, a stylish celebration of art deco architecture.”
Macleans, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-61
Unfortunately many of the buildings have now gone, Trico and Macleans among them, although a few of the grander survive. I think I knew when I took these pictures two years before the business moved that these would shortly be demolished.
Trico, 980, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-51
The Trico Products Windscreen Wiper factory, No. 980, Great West Road, Brentford opened in 1928, three years after the new road was opened by George V in 2025 as the Brentford by-pass. Trico relocated to Pontypool, South Wales in 1992 and the building was demolished.
Certainly I took more pictures of these buildings than the others along this stretch of road, about three times as many as are in this post, though most of the rest are fairly similar to these.
Trico, 980, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-52
In the 1980s there was still little general appreciation of Art Deco or moderne buildings from the 1920s and 1930s and few had been give the protection afforded by listing. The most celebrated case of demolition was the Firestone Tyre Factory which had closed and been sold to Trafalgar House, a company run by Lord Victor Matthews and Nigel Broakes on 22nd August 1980.
A Department of the Environment inspector had the same week decided the building should be listed, but as it was the Bank Holiday weekend no civil servant was available to sign the emergency listing document. “On Saturday 23 August Lord Matthews ordered demolition men to destroy the main features of the facade – the ceramic tiles around the entrance, the white pillars, the pediment above and the bronze lamp standards.” And so one of the finest buildings on the stretch was destroyed.
Trico, 980, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-54
Victor Matthews, who as well as being Chairman of Trafalgar House was the proprietor of the Daily Express, had been made a Life Peer as Baron Matthews of Southgate a month before this despicable act of cultural vandalism.
Grand Union Canal, Trico, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-56
The canal which had been so important in earlier Brentford history was irrelevant to the companies which now set up along the new road. They were entirely based around road transport and very much used their impressive frontages as advertisements for their businesses to those driving along the new highway.
Grand Union Canal, Trico, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-41
More from other buildings along the Great West Road in the next instalment.
Jubilee Chapel, Primitive Methodist, New Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-26
Built in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the church closed in 1964 when a new church opened in Clifden Rd. The Primitives had joined with the Wesleyans and United Methodists in 1932. The building is a rather curious design laid out along the road with a tower like this at each end and five bays between, the central one with what looks as it should be an entrance with taller brickwork and a triangular pediment above a large oval-topped window. You can see a little of the interesting brickwork in my photograph. The windows now have some delicate metal protection in front of them and the building is still in use, I think by an Electrical contactor. It is locally listed for its architectural and social significance.
House, Hamilton Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-11
This Gothick style house at 17 Hamilton Road stands head and shoulders above its neighbours with a basement, steps up to a grand doorway and the fine decoration below its distinctive oriel window. It is capped on one side with an attic gable, making it three and a half storeys. Locally listed.
Performance Cars Ltd, Windmill Rd, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-13
Although it might gain no stars for its uncompromising 1930s architecture this building for Performance Cars had a blunt and striking appearance and I was sad to see it was about to be demolished, one of many losses of buildings along the Great West Road. It’s a shame it was not saved, although the adjoining workshops were no great loss. Most of its site is now empty or parking for another motor dealer. I took this picture from underneath the elevated M4.
The Globe, Boston Park Rd, 104, Windmill Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-15
The Globe pub on the corner of Boston Park Road and Windmill Road is still open and is a popular traditional pub which still has some original features.Though it is no longer run by Fullers you may still be able to get a pint of London Pride. My picture just shows a little of the large globe let into the parapet above the corner of the building.
The pub was built in the 1880s and acquired by Fuller Smith & Turner in 1908. It is named in an impressive series of reviews of Brentford’s pubs written by ‘Wandering Tom’ and published in the County of Middlesex Indepent in 1996 but he tells us nothing mopre than its name. Unearthed by Vic Rosewarne as part of extensive research into Brentford’s pubs, these notes have been re-published as part of the Brentford High Street project.
Macleans Toothpaste, Great West Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-16
Finally two pictures – more to follow later – of another and more important loss of the 1920’s factories that lined the Brentford section of the new Great West Road. This was Maclean’s Toothpaste factory, opened in 1932 and together with the neighbouring Trico was demolished in 1992.
Trico Products Windscreen Wiper factory, No. 980 Great West Road, opened in 1928. The Trico business relocated to Pontypool, South Wales in 1992 and the building was demolished.
Macleans, Boston Manor Rd, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1g-01
Initially the Macleans site, along with the adjoining former Trico factory next to the Grand Union Canal was to be a UK headquarters for Samsung, but plans fell through with an Asian financial crisis and instead building a new headquarters of GlaxoSmithKline was begun in 1998 and completed in 2001. Designed by Hillier with RHWL and Swanke Hayden Connell it was the biggest single commercial development of the time, and one of the few more interesting new buildings on the Great West Road.
GSK announced they were selling it in 2021 and the last of their staff left the building in 2014. There are now plans being made for what will probably be the largest ever development in Brentford.
Vantage London, Great West Rd, M4, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-45
Built around 1970 as the 12 storey headquarters of Beecham Pharmaceuticals it was no longer needed after they became part of Glaxo Smith Kline and was refurbished as as Vantage London with offices let to a number of companies. The building was again refurbished in 2016 and in 2019 was sold to a Luxembourg based company for £30 million.
In 2024 a planning application was made by Resolution Property for its conversion into 178 flats. It was approved following some modifications in April 2025.
The elevated section of the M4 runs on top of the Great West Road in front of the building. The strucvture in the foreground is I think a gritting bin.
Great West Rd, M4, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-35
Taken under the elevated M4 where slip roads link the A4 Great West Road with the motorway. One project I was working on at the time was inspired by J G Ballard’s 1973 novel ‘Crash’, key scenes of which were set in this area – although the 1996 film of the book by Cronenberg was made in Canada. Ballard who lived not far away in Shepperton obviously knew the area well.
Crash centres around a car crash victim who finds himself aroused by car accidents but my project was more simply about the domination of our culture by the car and I felt threatened by the powerfully enclosed architecture here which is perhaps a modern equivalent of the Roman coliseums, and was rather choked by the fumes.
On previous occasions I had photographed the iconic moderne 1930s buildings along the Great West Road, and this at right shows Beechams, which had this side entrance a few yards down Clayponds Lane. The factory building continues in a more utilitarian fashion but with a tall window, probably lighting a staircase which reflects the style.
Flats, Carville Hall, Carville Hall Park, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990,90-1f-22
The Carville Hall Estate was bought by Middlesex County Council in 1919 for the construction of the Great West Rd, and they sold the parts on both sides of the new road to Brentford UDC as a park, which opened in 1923. The house, orginally known as Clayponds, is now called Simmonds House. Originally built in the late 18th century, the front was re-modelled in the 19th century. It is locally listed.
The park is off Clayponds Lane and parts of it were once dug for clay, leaving ponds, marked as ‘Fishponds’ on the 1871 OS Map.
Lion, flats, Carville Hall Park, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-23
Beyond the lion and the park are the tall blocks of the Brentford Towers Estate built for Hounslow Council in 1968-72.
The house here had extensive grounds and there is now a park on both sides of the A4/M4. The park to the north of the roads is larger than this but of little interest.
The house is thought to have been built for the “wealthy distiller and brewer David Roberts (c1733-97)” and was later home to “coal and horse racing magnate William Lancalot Redhead (c1853-1909) and his daughter“. It was later converted into flats.
Lion, Carville Hall, Carville Hall Park, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-24
The fate of the lion appears to be a mystery. I was surprised on a later visit to find it no longer there and I’ve not been able to find what happened to it. The most I’ve come across is a suggestion that it was stolen.
I thought that it was probably a Victorian garden ornament made from artificial stone – Coade or Portland Stone etc – and would have been fairly heavy, so the thief would have needed a lorry with appropriate lifting gear.
St Alban’s Cottage, 164, Duke Rd, Chiswick, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1e-43
I can’t now remember how I got to Duke Road from Hammersmith – either by walking through some of the back streets or by taking a bus to Hogarth Lane where a footpath, Devonshire Passage, leads to Duke Road by the side of St Alban’s Cottage, a detached house dating from 1871.
This is on the Glebe Estate, formerly an open filed providing an income to the vicar of St Nicholas Church, Chiswick and owned by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and St Paul’s Cathedral who let it for building in 1869. As Gillian Clegg remarks, “That charming little enclave of Victorian cottages between Duke Road and Devonshire Road, Glebe Street and Fraser Street has become one of the most desirable, not to say expensive, places in which to live, which is somewhat ironic since the houses were built as homes for Chiswick’s less affluent.” And this is probably the most charming of the cottages in the area.
I went up Duke Road to the Chiswick High Road in Turnham Green and I think probably jumped on another bus to Kew Bridge.
Lionel Road South runs from beside Kew Bridge Station to the Great West Road and is now dominated by Brentford Football Club’s Gtech Community Stadium. RSR Fasterners in Station House was close to the corner with Kew Bridge Road. All of the land in this area had been railway land and was important for bringing passengers and coal from the north of England in the 1850s. In 1990 this building was still on the edge of the station’s freight yard as the sign directing deliveries indicates. The company RSR Fasteners was founded in 1948 and moved here the following year. The business is now based in Hayes.
At the back of the signs here for Tunnel Cement, Brentford Commercials and others is a sign for the British Rail Freight Yard, although some sources say the goods yard closed in 1967. In the background you can see Kearney’s large shed and beyond it the Agfa building on the Great West Road.
The Agfa building was extensively refurbished and became 27 West but the rest was swept away with the development of the new Brentford stadium. There are now further plans for the development of the area.
I’m not sure that the rather rusted vehicle here was a good advert for the servicing provided by the Tony Western Garage.
Another view of Rydal Engineering and to the right of the Volvo lorry is Kearneys, with the Agfa building again in the background.
Agfa were one of the pioneers of colour negative film, introducing Agfacolor in 1932 and I’d occasionally used Agfa film, but they had failed to keep up with others and almost all of the colour I have put online was taken on Fujicolor – and when I made prints in the darkroom they were all on Fuji paper – except for the project ‘German Indications’ which I printed from transparencies on outdated Agfa reversal paper.
Flats, Green Dragon Lane from Lionel Rd, Kew Bridge, Brentford, Hounslow, 1990, 90-1f-55
Looking across Lionel Road was a parking yard protected by a tall fence, The railway line is lower down and out of sight beyond this, and the four tall blocks of flats are on Green Dragon Lane. Here is what I wrote about when they appeared in a picture from an earlier walk:
Six 23 storey blocks were built here as the Brentford Towers Estate in 1968 to 1972 by the London Borough of Hounslow.
Green Dragon Lane apparently got its name from a 17th century pub but there appears to be no record of where this was, though there are or were around 40 other pubs of that name elsewhere in the country. The name is usually thought either to have come from the Livery Badge worn by servants of the Herbert family, the Earl of Pembroke, which showed a bloody arm being eaten by a dragon or a reference to King Charles II’s Portuguese Catholic queen, Catherine of Braganza whose family badge was the Green Wyvern.
Bridge Avenue used to run from King Street to Hammersmith Bridge Road close to Hammersmith Bridge, but was severed with the building of the Great West Road through Hammersmith in the 1960s, the section to the south of this now being Bridge View, though the two are still linked for cyclists and pedestrians by a crossing.
This derelict building was demolished and replaced by a block of offices which is now occupied as the sixth-form block of a Free School. You can faintly make out its former name above the doorway BRITISH HOME STORES. This had its main 1937 Deco frontage at 111-117 King Street, still visible above more recent shopfronts (see below.)
I also photographed the Grade II listed mid-nineteenth century terrace at 1-31 on the east side of Bridge Avenue but have not yet digitised this.
Frank Dale & Stepsons, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-66
Frank Dale and Stepsons was an unusual business name and the shop, a high-end car showroom, seemed an unusual building for a high street here. The company, trading in Rolls-Royce and Bentley motor cars was set up by Frank Dale in 1946 in Paddington, moved to Holbein Place off Sloane Square in 1966, on to Fulham in 1972 and to these larger premises in Hammersmith in 1985. In 2000 they went further west to Harlequin Avenue off the Great West Road in Brentford and since 2020 has been based in Sandhurst on the borders of Berkshire, Hampshire, and Surrey. The company history is well illustrated on its web site.
This building at 120-124 King Street was on the site of a pub established in 1419 and later known as the Plough & Harrow Public House. The building dated from 1903 and the pub closed around 1960. The facade was retained when the site was rebuilt around 2002 and its ground floor resurrected the old pub name as a Wetherspoons. A pleasantly airy alternative to the William Morris a short walk away it was closed by the company in June 2025. The upper floors are a hotel.
Wades, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-51
This is the 1937 Deco frontage of the former British Home Stores. When I made this picture it was Wades’ NATIONAL UPHOLSTERY CLEARANCE CENTRE, but was holding its Branch Closing Down Sale. Wade Upholstery are apparently “recognised as one of the finest British makers of sofas and chairs, with a history dating back to 1921, and is sold by the best furniture retailer’s around the world.”
Two bridges carry the District and Piccadilly lines across Cambridge Grove and this entrance is on the west side of the road next to the northern of the two. Since 2020 this has been The Clay Garden, a ceramics studio running pottery classes, membership, private hire and masterclasses.
The Cambridge Arms, pub, Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-55
The Cambridge Arms was built in 1853 but following a major refurbishment in 1997 it was renamed The Stonemasons Arms and it mainly caters for young professional people and prides itself for “serving craft beer and sourdough pizzas daily.”
Behind it is St John the Evangelist, Glenthorne Road, by William Butterfield built 1857–9. Grade II* listed, it closed as a church in 2005 and is now used by Godolphin and Latymer School as a performing arts centre.
The Cambridge Arms, pub, Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-41
Another pictures of the Cambridge Arms. Formerly a Watney Combe Reid house it was revamped by Fuller’s. On its side are what I think are the arms of the Prince of Wales – the Duke of Cambridge is a hereditary title of nobility in the British royal family.
Arthur Luckett was an undertaker with this shop at 59 Glenthorne Road, Hammersmith. Later it became a Unisex hairdressing salon who added an awning which rather spoils the frontage and more recently a property management company.
The modern offices at right were for Phillips Medical Systems and have since been replaced.
Finally in Hammersmith I made this picture of Ashcroft Square in Leamore St, a 1973 housing estate on top of a shopping centre designed by Richard Seifert. The shops were only officially opened in 1979. The Kings Mall Shopping Centre is now owned by IKEA.
But this was not the end of my walk. I jumped on a bus to take me a mile or so to the west before the pictures in another post.
Latymer, Cromwell, Britannia, Chapels, Shops & Bevan: The first post from my walk on Sunday 7th January was Stamford Brook, Ravenscourt Park and a Bull – 1990 and it ended on King Street Hammersmith where this post begins. As usual you can click on any of the pictures in these walk posts to go to a larger version in one of my Flickr albums.
Latymer Upper School, King St, Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-36
Like many other well-known schools Latymer School began with a bequest for the education of poor boys. Edward Latymer in 1624 left money to provide 8 poor boys with clothing and education to the age of 13. Later bequests added to the foundation and in 1811, Ann Wyatt left £500 to build a new school together with £100 for its maintenance. Schools were set up in both Edmonton and Fulham.
The Fulham school moved to Hammersmith in 1648 and since then has had various buildings in the area. This building, Latymer Upper School was opened in 1895 and taught boys up to the age of 16. Following the 1945 Education Act it became a Direct Grant Grammar School, taking both state and fee-paying pupils.
When I took my 11-plus I could have applied to go here, but my parents were worried both by the cost of uniforms etc they couldn’t afford and also the long journey times I would have had to make and sent me to a more local Grammar.
The Direct Grant scheme was abolished in 1976, with Latymer becoming a fee-paying “Public School“, though still retaining some means-tested grant assisted places. When I made this picture it was still a boy’s school, but girls were admitted into the sixth form in 1996 and beginning in 2004 the whole school slowly became co-educational.
Cromwell Avenue is a street off King Street to the south, and these flats cover its whole east side. I think the street runs along what was the west side of Hammersmith Brewery, set up in 1780 by Joseph Cromwell on Hammersmith Creek, then navigable as far as King Street. The brewery was later run by his brother James Cromwell but seems to have stopped brewing in the 1840s.
Hammersmith Creek was the mouth of Stamford Brook, a small stream running from Gunnersbury. As well as the brewery on its west bank it also had wharves on its east side and in the early 19th century still had a flourishing industry. It was filled in in the early 20th century and Stamford Brook now reaches the Thames in a culvert under Furnivall Gardens.
Formerly known as the Ebenezer Chapel and Albion Congregational Church, was said to have built in the 1780s when recently offered for sale, although Pevsner dates it to 1891-2 by F W Stocking.
The congregation of the Ebenezer Chapel moved to a church on this site from King St in 1855. The church closed in 1938 and became a Salvation Army chapel which has now recently closed.
The buildings are still here at 108-116 Glenthorne Rd but there is no trace of Britannia. During the corona virus pandemic they were used by the volunteer community aid network launched by Hammersmith & Fulham Council, H&F CAN to give support to residents. Before that the windows were full of fireplaces, wood-burning stoves and mirrors
Gospel Hall, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-03
The Gospel Hall of the Kelly Mission was at 170 King Street and the site has now been redeveloped. Until 1919 this was the site of the Cock and Magpie pub and the Gospel Hall was built soon after
These buildings are still there at 157-163 King Street though Maplin, Shelly’s Shores and Pizza Inn have all been replaced by different businesses. Even the more modern building beyond has survived.
I couldn’t make out much of the remains of an advertisement on the Holcome Street wall though it seems to have a very large ‘UNN’ in it. No traces of it remain but there are now some wall bracing plates on the wall.
These blocks of flats in Aspen Gardens have a 1930s look to them but were built shortly after the end of the war clearing a large slum area and were opened in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan.
Best known for the NHS, Bevan was also responsible for housing and advocated for a national housing scheme to ensure everyone had decent and affordable homes. He wanted social housing for all, creating “create new homes and communities with a place for all sections of society” like that in English and Welsh villages “where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street.”
Despite incredible post-was shortages of materials and skilled labour, in 1948 there were 227,600 new homes built.
Stamford Brook, Ravenscourt Park and a Bull: My photographs on Sunday 7th January 1990 began with a couple of views of the Thames though the window of my District Line train which I’ve not put online, but my walk started after I got off at Stamford Brook station and walked south down Goldhawk Rd.
This fine house at 397-399 attracted my attention. It had been Grade II listed in 1976, but the listing text was unusually vague about its date, calling it “Early to mid C19” and the Westcroft Square conservation area document is equally vague.
Beyond the house is a large noticeboard for ‘Z GREGORY BROTHERS, BUILDING CONTRACTORS’ at 399a, still there and I think only the phone number has changed, and another fairly grand semi-detached house which I think are late Victorian.
St Peter’s Square, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-53
Since I was so close I couldn’t resist another short visit to St Peter’s Square south of the main road which changes its name here from Chiswick High Road to King Street. After the county of London was formed in 1889 this was the boundary between London and Middlesex and it is now the boundary between the London boroughs of Hounslow and Hammersmith & Fulham.
I’d photographed this square fairly extensively the previous month – see my post here) and only stopped to take a handful of pictures – this the only one online – and I was rather pleased with it.
Back on the main road I photographed the corner of Goldhawk Road and King Street, known as Young’s Corner and, as a plaque at first floor level also informs us, ‘REBUILT 1894’, though I’m rather surprised the architect wanted his name on the rather drab two storey buildingon the corner. But at least it doesn’t completely hide the much grander Victorian building at 417 Goldhawk behind behind with its slim turret – and it is perhaps this building for which the architect was claiming credit rather than the shop.
Grocer John Young had leased a shop here in 1830, and it later also became a post office. When at his death in 1860 his youngest son Charles Spencer Young took over the business he eventually turned it into a shop to display prints as a successful picture dealer. When horse-drawn trams ran to here in 1882, the tramway stop was named Young’s Corner.
King St, Stamford Brook, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-56
A fine row of three shops at 352- 356 King Street. At left is a basic and rather ugly more modern building – described in the conservation area document as “modern infill of no merit and bulky appearance“.
Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-45
Ravenscourt Park is not just an Underground station, but a decent sized park with a lake fed by Stamford Brook, which originally was part of a moat around the manor house of Palingswick (or Paddenswick) Manor. It and the area got its name after the house was bought in 1747 by Thomas Corbett who renamed it Ravenscourt, thought to be a not very good pun on his name – ‘corbeau‘ being French for raven.
I hardly went into the park, and this house is 260 King Street.
The house at 260 King Street is at the left of this picture, followed by a row of shops including one of more interest to me than most, Mac’s Cameras. Max Irming-Geissler set up the shop here in the late 1950s and it continued more or less until his death in 2012. It was a great place to look at a window full of second-hand cameras and lenses, though I don’t think I ever actually bought anything there.
The Bull, Ravenscourt Arms, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-31
This Grade II listed black bull was created by Obadiah Pulham of Pulham & Son in Woodbridge, Suffolk, a well-known maker of garden ornaments, grottoes and follies. It is almost certainly made from Pulhamite, their own proprietary artificial rock, similar to the better-known Coade stone. I think it might actually have been William Lockwood’s Portland Stone Cement. James Pulham was an apprentice to Lockwood and became manager of Lockwood’s Spitalfields office around 1820 with his brother Obidiah as his assistant.
It was created as a pub sign for the Black Bull coaching inn at 122a Holborn and gets a mention from Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit published in 1843. The pub was demolished in 1904 for an extension to Gamages but the bull was saved by Hammersmith MP Sir William Bull to put above the entrance to his law firm in King Street.
When these offices were demolished it was located outside a 1960s pub, at 257 King Street, a short way down Vencourt Place. The pub later changed its name from the Ravenscourt Arms to the Black Bull. The pub closed around 2018 but it and the bull are I think still there.
The final post on walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is West India Dock Road & Limehouse Cut – 1990. As usual you can click on the images here to view larger versions on my Flickr pages.
Looking south towards the blockage across the canal through the bridge which carries the DLR over Limehouse Cut. At the right are the temporary buildings for the construction work on the Limehouse Link tunnel. The Limehouse Cut turns around to the right past the blockage to join Limehouse Dock and I think the industrial buildings you can see are in Brightlingsea Street.
I walked along the towpath to Commercial Road carried over the canal by Britannia Bridge, named for the Britannia Tavern which stood here until 1911, when it was probably removed to allow the bridge to be widened for traffic and also to allow for a towpath under the bridge.
At spring tides when the water rose to its highest it would overtop the old Bow Locks, with water flowing into both the Cut and the lower stretch of the Lea Navigation. This created a problem, particularly when the Cut was connected to the Limehouse Dock. In this picture you see the vertical guillotine gate which was fitted here after the Cut was taken over by British Waterways in 1948 enabling the canal to be isolated from the dock. It was removed soon after I made this picture.
You can also see the 1923 Empire Memorial Sailors’ Hostel on the corner of Commercial Road and Salmon Lane, built as a memorial to all the seamen who had lost their lives in the First World War. Later used as a hostel for the homeless and to house immigrants it had by 1990 been converted into luxury flats.
H W Bush, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1c-16
Island Row, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1f-66
Taken from near to the end of Island Row. But my walk was coming to an end. I made only one more black and white picture, not yet digitised, of the Regents Canal Lock from Commercial Road on my way to Limehouse station.
But I had also carried a second camera body loaded with colour negative film and I made the occasional colour picture during the walk. Here are four of them:
