Our Patch JUNE 2016
LOOKING
BACK
ST pETER'S SQUARE
H A M M ERS M IT H
16/17
A
new history book tells
the story of St
Peter’s Square and
neighbourhood, charting
the development, growth
and change over two
centuries in Hammersmith.
The area’s queen bee and longest
continuous resident, Jilly Paver, who
was born in the square in 1947, has
spent two years researching the district,
amassing photographs, maps and
anecdotes.
The project actually started a quarter
of a century ago, when she and her
architect husband Brian staged a ‘then
and now’ photographic show at St
Peter’s church, the grand Grade ll* listed
structure in Black Lion Lane which is
the oldest church in Hammersmith.
Some of the pictures she assembled
back then formed the basis of a second
exhibition, two summers ago, at the St
Peter’s festival. “Everyone loved it, but
there was a lot of text to read, so people
came back several times to see it all,”
said Jilly, who lived all her childhood
on the edge of the square before
she and Brian set up their original
matrimonial home in Black Lion Lane.
The exhibition prompted many
visitors to suggest that the material
would look good in book form, and
that appetite has produced St Peter’s
Estate: A History of St Peter’s Square and
its Neighbourhood, published by Book
Empire at £7.50.
Illustrated with 60 black and white
images of traffic-free streets littered
only with horse droppings, the 100page volume’s initial 150 print run has
all-but sold out, necessitating a second
edition.
The alumni of St Peter’s Square sums
up the arty appeal of the conservation
area down the years.
“When I was a child it was all artists,
sculptors, painters, designers and
actors,” said Jilly. “It was a bohemian
area that was known as west London’s
Bloomsbury Set.”
Bomb damage in
Standish Road in
September 1940; one
of the powerful images
in Jilly Paver's new book
Past residents include Vanessa
Redgrave, Alec Guinness, the painter
and stai