Campaigners Call for Homes in Empress Place to Be Restored
Victorian street 'left to rot' after being emptied for ill-fated Earls Court development
Keith Whitehouse and campaigners in Empress Place
TfL has been urged to reopen rows of “neglected” and boarded-up homes in the Earls Court regeneration site for families to live in.
Fourteen Victorian houses and flats in Empress Place, and several more along Lillie Road, were part of the ill-fated Earls Court project which originally involved building 7,500 new homes.
Chair of The Fulham and Hammersmith Historical Society, Keith Whitehouse, 71, said: “These homes have been neglected.
“They were vacated in 2016. We have since had a street of houses being left to rot.
“They were stripped from the inside and boarded up.
“But if they were cleaned up they would be very attractive.”
The Earls Court scheme had ground to a halt after its inception 12 years ago until last year when Capco, the site’s former landlord, sold its majority share in the land to Delancey and Dutch investor APG for £425 million.
It means the Earl’s Court land, including homes and shops in Empress Place and Lillie Road, are now co-owned by TfL, Delancey and APG. And any new set of proposals to build on the 1.3 million-sq ft plot may not begin to take shape for another two to three years while new blueprints are drawn up.
Mr Whitehouse, a retired archaeologist, pictured above, said: “One minute you hear councils or the Mayor of London telling you we’re in a housing crisis and it’s terrible, then you see streets like this.”
He added that TfL, which is run by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, “should be doing something with these homes because they are just stood there doing nothing.”
The Prince pub – formerly the Prince of Wales – could again come under threat in 2021. It too sits within the regeneration land and is owned by the three parties, and its “Asset of Community Value” protection will expire next year.
Empress Place contains 14 properties while nine more flats, with their windows painted over, sit above the shops along Lillie Road. Like The Prince pub, the future of these shops also depends on whether APG, Delancey and TfL agree to demolish them when redevelopment eventually gets underway.
TfL, Delancey and APG were all approached for comment. A spokesperson for the joint project said: “Having recently taken over as custodians of the Earls Court development, our immediate priority has been meeting with the local community to understand their priorities and aspirations for the area.
“Many of the empty buildings were stripped out in 2017 and are therefore not fit for living. However, we are reviewing options to assess whether they could be used on a sustainable basis in the future.
“Similarly, The Prince and the rest of the temporary pop up units within West Brompton Crossing will operate as normal until a new masterplan has been agreed and future works begin on site.
" We will give current tenants and the local community plenty of notice before this happens.”
Empress Place inherited its name from the story of how Queen Victoria journeyed down the street to visit the Exhibition Centre and pleasure gardens in 1887, to watch the highly-anticipated performance of American entertainer Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
Number 17 Empress Place was once home to award-winning classical composer William Hurlstone, before he died age 30 in 1906.
Owen Sheppard, Local Democracy Reporter
February 26, 2020