Hammersmith Area Guide

Living In Hammersmith

Our Hammersmith area guide highlights many advantages - attractive riverside walks and pubs, a village ambience in Brackenbury Road and Brook Green, good state and private schools.

And after seven years, Hammersmith & Fulham borough looks to have solved the problem of what to do with the shabby western end of King Street, the main shopping street.

It involves demolition of the council’s ugly Seventies office extension, the restoration of the listed Thirties town hall building, a replacement cinema for the demolished Cineworld, plus cafés, shops, restaurants and a new public square.

There will also be 204 new homes of which 52 per cent are proclaimed to be “genuinely affordable for local people”, a new rooftop bar, art and events space and affordable and flexible start-up workspaces. There has also been a £5 million revamp of Kings Mall shopping centre.

The riverside along Lower and Upper Mall is a peaceful, traffic-free refuge from the frantic gyratory and busy shopping streets of the town centre. This is one the areas loveliest spots, with Georgian houses, boathouses and historic pubs.

The 18th-century landscape designer Capability Brown lived here for 13 years and in 2017 a life-size statue of him was unveiled at Distillery Wharf.

Writer, social reformer, artist and craftsman William Morris lived at Kelmscott House in Upper Mall between 1878 and 1896. A small museum in the coach house is run by the William Morris Society.

The property scene in Hammersmith is robust and in demand - with Georgian houses and period cottages in Lower and Upper Mall and in the surrounding streets, elsewhere Hammersmith is dominated by streets of Victorian houses, from two- and three-bedroom homes in the Bradmore conservation area — known as Brackenbury Village — to three- and four-storey properties in the Brook Green conservation area.

A four-bedroom Victorian unmodernised house in Iffley Road, Brackenbury Village, was recently sold by us at London Estates with multiple bids for £1.2 million.

St Peter’s Square has classical white stucco houses and Westcroft Square has four-storey Victorian terraces.

There are many Victorian mansion flats in Hammersmith – with Phoenix Lodge Mansions on the corner of Brook Green and Shepherd’s Bush Road; in Digby Mansions in Hammersmith Bridge Road, some with river views, and in College Court in Queen Caroline Street close to the flyover.

Hamlet Gardens near Ravenscourt Park also has Victorian mansion flats, plus Art Deco blocks. Latymer Court in Hammersmith Road is an imposing Art Deco block. There are modern riverside flats east of Hammersmith Bridge and in the town centre in Glenthorne Road.

Sovereign Court is a new development (one of many) in Glenthorne Road, and Fulham Reach in Chancellor’s Road east of Hammersmith Bridge are both by the renowned developer St George.

Renting in Hammersmith is extremely popular – with excellent housing stock, great transport links, and quality schools plus lots of open spaces.

Major Hammersmith employers such as Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Disney and Dunnhumby help make this a popular rental area, with everything from studio flats to five- and six-bedroom homes available.

Families, especially with children at local schools, tend to stay in the Hammersmith area, as do working professionals due to the exceptional transport links for a city and airport commute.

St Peter’s Square has large white stucco houses; Ravenscourt Road has large Victorian four-storey houses, some overlooking Ravenscourt Park.

Transport - Hammersmith has easy access to the M3 and the M4. Hammersmith Underground station is on the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Piccadilly lines. Ravenscourt Park and Stamford Brook are on the District line, all stations are in Zone 2.

A busy transport hub, Hammersmith has 17 bus routes running round the gyratory with three useful commuter buses. The No 9 goes to Aldwych via Kensington High Street and Trafalgar Square; the No 23 goes to Westbourne Park via Knightsbridge and Marble Arch, while the No 27 runs to Chalk Farm via Paddington and Baker Street.