This magnificent building was completed in 1897. It cost £28,000; considered extravagant by its opponents. It fronted onto Brook Green Road and Hammersmith Broadway. It was Hammersmith Town Hall.
It was designed in the ornate Italian manner, a style that had been popular for metropolitan municipal architecture since at least the 1860s but which was soon to pass from fashion. The red-brick and Portland-stone front was dominated by a tower, dividing the façade into two unequal sections. The larger part, with the public hall behind, was chiefly ornamented by a large tablet bearing the arms of Hammersmith Vestry, supported by reclining figures. The ground floor was given over to offices, with strong rooms and ‘all the modern conveniences’, off a grand octagonal entrance hall and marble-lined corridors. At one end of the building was an impressive staircase, spanning the full width of the building, for access to the galleried public hall. The council chamber, which was also galleried, was given its own staircase and lift. The builders were a local firm, Wimpey and Co. (Historic England)
I suppose ornate Italianate architecture was popularised by Osborne House. I think it’s about time it made a come-back. Now let’s turn to Wimpey and Co. George Wimpey was born in Brook Green in 1855. He was a stonemason and builder. In 1888 he went into partnership with Walter Tomes and their firm went on to build the White City stadium, venue for the 1908 Olympic Games. George became a Vice President of the MCC and a founding member of Chelsea football club. None of these distinctions are mentioned on his elegant memorial in Margravine cemetery.
Wimpey’s town hall was demolished in the 1960s; it had been superseded by another built off King Street in 1939. When you drive along the Great West Road you will see it on the north side not far from the flyover.
It is a fine building of its time; Historic England again.
A blocky outline, with an emphasis on mass, volume, and subtle detailing, inventively mixing modern and classically derived elements, show a debt to contemporary European public architecture. This hybrid style, aptly characterised by a contemporary critic a “Swedish-Georgian” compromise, was a popular choice for municipal buildings in the 1930s and E Berry Webber was one of its more successful practitioners.
The Crittall windows are looking a bit sad but there are striking effigies of Father Thames adorning the stairs.
The builder was Allen Fairhead and Sons. (One of Allen Fairhead’s descendants is my Goddaughter.) It is Grade II listed unlike the third town hall, a concrete monstrosity built in the 1970s on King Street. It is being demolished and I don’t know what will take its place; probably shops with flats above.
Say Goodbye to Berlin and Hello to Hammersmith
Kenneth Rose was as devoted to the Royal Family as their corgis and like them wasn’t averse to giving lesser folk a sharp nip. He goes to Emmanuel College Cambridge in November 1993 to see the Princess of Wales lay the foundation stone of new buildings. The Master is Norman St John-Stevas and KR notices “his own name is in letters no smaller than those of the Princess”. Councillor Stanley Atkins goes one better; he puts his name in letters bigger than those of Willi Brandt.
The inscription is hard to read.
The lamp above this plaque was formerly used to light a street in West Berlin
It was presented by Herr Willi Brandt, the Mayor of West Berlin to
Councillor Stanley Atkins JP the Worshipful Mayor of Hammersmith
as a token of friendship between the two communities on the occasion of the jumelage held in this borough 1st June 1963
I will save you the trouble.
Jumelage: town twinning (pairing of towns or cities).
There is an unusual new headstone in Margravine cemetery, spotted by Robert.
The Club
I’m enjoying The Club; Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age. It is by Leo Damrosch, the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature Emeritus at Harvard University, perversely published by Yale University Press. Often academics are less than engaging as authors. They know their stuff but their delivery is dull, dull, dull. LD is a delightful exception. I am living in the second half of the 18th century, guided by him but instead of quoting his insights let’s see what Johnson thought of whisky, as recorded in his A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.
”The word “whisky” signifies water and is applied by way of eminence to “strong water”, or distilled liquor. The spirit drunk in the North is drawn from barley. I never tasted it, except once for experiment at the inn in Inveraray, when I thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. It was strong, but not pungent, and was free from the empyreumatic taste or smell. What was the process I had no opportunity of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.”
Surprising to me at least that whisky didn’t make its way south in those days. It reminds me of A Smuggler’s Song by Rudyard Kipling. Here are the first two verses.
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark –
Brandy for the Parson, ‘Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!
Surely you mean Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
I did and have corrected, thank you.