OUR PATCH FEBRUARY 2014
OUR PATCH FEBRUARY 2014
LOOKING
BACK
THE CREEK
& LITTLE WAPPING
The High Bridge, c1920
Furnivall Garden
s, today
HAMMERSMITH
E
ver wonder what the
riverside in Hammersmith
was like 100 years ago?
The streams which formed
the Stamford Brook joined
the River Thames at The
Creek which divided the Lower
and Upper Malls at Hammersmith.
Until the 1930s the inlet, which
extended as far as King Street, was
lined with buildings, both industrial
and residential, and was spanned by
a wooden humpbacked bridge called
the High Bridge.
The Creek is believed to have been
one of the earliest areas of settlement
in Hammersmith, forming a sheltered
harbour for fishermen and riverside
dwellers and providing wharves for
barges to transfer goods between the
Thames and the main highway.
The area became heavily
industrialised with lead and oil
mills, malt houses, boat builders,
lime sheds, timber yards and builders’
16 / 17
merchants packed into every available
space. Between the factories was a
labyrinth of slum housing, known
as Little Wapping.
A report of 1913 vividly described
The Creek area as “one of London’s
poorer and apparently more hopeless
districts… situated in the alleys,
unpenetrated by any road…The
inhabitants are costers, flower sellers,
casual labourers, chronic invalids;
mothers habitually tired; and children,
children, children…The housing
accommodation is what you might
expect – in one street there is one
water-closet to four houses…in another
the costers’ donkeys are led through
the houses entering at the front door,
and going along the passages, to the
hovels in the yards at the back.”
In his book-lined study at Kelmscott
House in Upper Mall, designer
William Morris was regularly disturbed
by the ‘yells and shrieks’ of street
urchins from ‘the foul and degraded
lodgings’ of Little Wapping who
swung on his gate.
As part of the Southern
Improvement Scheme of 1922,
Hammersmith Borough Council
planned to clear the area and build
new housing and in 1927 the
council bought property around
The Creek for £8,000. Old houses
were demolished to make way for
blocks of flats at Riverside Gardens.
Preparations for the construction of
the new Town Hall in King Street
began in 1936 when The Creek was
culverted and the bed of the inlet
filled in.
The district changed beyond all
recognition after a flying bomb
destroyed factories and properties
along the riverside on the night
of 24 July 1944. Furnivall Gardens
was created in 1951 on the site of
The Creek, sweeping away the last
remnants of the area known as
Little Wapping.
The creek, Late 19th century
William Morris was
regularly disturbed by
the ‘yells and shrieks’
of street urchins