Don’t think that I rant about all modern architecture. There is a lot of good stuff on my doorstep. Hammersmith Broadway and the flyover are not a good setting for anything but there are three interesting buildings which overcome their awkward positions.
The Hammersmith Surgery is almost tucked under the flyover alongside a busy road. It was opened in 2001 and deservedly won a RIBA prize. From the outside it looks like a series of overlapping shells, blocking out the noise of road and flyover. Inside, light comes from windows recessed between the shells on one side and on the other a curved glass wall. Fifteen years on it still looks good and functions to boot. Well done Guy Greenfield Architects, well you’d have to be an architect with that name.
I have already written about The Ark, not so successful but nevertheless does look good, in this post so we can skip to St Paul’s Church, also alongside the flyover and fronting onto Hammersmith Broadway. Before looking at the modern extension, come into the church built in 1630 but replaced by the present building in 1883. Oh dear, it’s locked so we will just have to imagine the bronze bust of Charles I within, erected by Sir Nicholas Crispe. His heart was placed below the bust with this inscription.
Within this urn is entombed the heart of Sir Nicholas Crispe, Knt. and Baronet, a loyal sharer in the sufferings of his late and present Majesty
He first settled the trade of Gold from Guinea and there built the Castle of Cormantine
Died the 26th February, 1665 Aged 67 years
Outside there is a headstone commemorating another tragedy; Richard Honey and George Francis killed during the funeral procession of Queen Caroline of Brunswick in 1821. The inscription reads.
They were killed by soldiers in the Oxford Blues when the funeral procession was blocked by barricades near Hyde Park. The 21st century extension is at the west end of the church.
The plaque unveiled in 2011 by the Bishop of London has this rather apt quotation.
If it doesn’t seem familiar it is because it is not from the King James Bible where it reads:
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places:thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.
Somewhere under the flyover are the remains of Beavor Lodge, the house and studio of my great grandfather, Sir William Richmond RA. This was described in 1902 as ” standing alone within its high- walled garden, a relic of old days, an oasis of peace amid the surging sea of traffic. In the garden the birds sing as if they were a hundred miles from London, and they have every reason to believe that they are so. For it is a country garden not a suburban imitation… There are long, grass walks with borders on each side, in which great scarlet poppies make vivid sport of colour, and blue irises and white rear their stately heads etc etc” .
There is a Beavor Lane nearby which may be where the garden was.