Where do you go to, my lovely readers? You frequent Mount Street when you put up at The Connaught, you saunter along Jermyn Street on the way to the London Library; perhaps you venture down the King’s Road en route to the Chelsea Physic Garden?
That’s a lot of product placement; I think it’s called ‘click bait’. Here the links are for one reason only; some readers know about these places and it would be otiose to expand; others may be in the dark and it makes sense for them to cotton on without boring the pants off those already in the picture. Anyway, it is a simple expedient to bring everybody up to speed. Wouldn’t it be lovely if these institutions paid me for publishing a link to their websites? Yes it would, but no they don’t.
Now let’s get on message. It’s my lot to frequent King Street, Hammersmith, picking up stuff from the post office, shopping at Poundland and looking at the architecture. Pevsner confirms that it’s unprepossessing: ” King Street starts quite well … but quickly degenerates into the muddle of 20th century rebuilding common in suburban shopping streets”.
Many of the Public Houses have architectural integrity but other shop fronts are just that; charity shops, amusement arcades, take-aways, and chains (M&S, Boots, Iceland, etc). However, look up and there are remnants of what must have been an elegant Victorian thoroughfare.
Domes jostle with gables interspersed with bland frontage built in the second half of the 20th century. The plaster work around the windows, above, is rather fine. The picture is a cautionary tale – a pawnbroker adjacent to a betting shop.
There are two prominent pieces of Brutalism: the Town Hall extension and Kings Mall. The former is expected to be demolished and re-developed. The latter is a shopping centre with residential and office space. It’s no beauty.
An unexpected feature is the Lyric Theatre, designed by Frank Matcham. It was a condition of the 1970s development to retain the original auditorium and that has been honoured.
