Lottery Grant for Local Landmark

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Hammersmith Historic House Receives Vital Funding

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has awarded a grant of £50,000 to the Emery Walker Trust for 7 Hammersmith Terrace.

The Project Planning Grant was awarded to the Trust to enable it to produce a conservation management plan, an audience development plan, and an education and access plan. The creation of these plans will significantly increase the Trust’s ability to further the conservation and preservation of the house, as well as developing it as an educational resource and visitor attraction.

7 Hammersmith Terrace, the former home of the Arts & Crafts printer Emery Walker, has been open to the public since 2005. The open season begins in April, ending in September, and visitors are able to see the interior of the house and garden on pre-booked guided tours. The house is in a pretty Georgian Terrace overlooking the Thames. Thanks to Emery Walker’s daughter, its interior is perfectly preserved as it was in her father’s lifetime.

This award from the HLF represents a milestone for the house and Trust as campaigning for its preservation and importance to the Arts and Crafts movement began nearly fifty years ago.

Friends of the house over the years have included Nikolaus Pevsner and John Betjeman, who wrote about “the way the twinkling light from the Thames at the bottom of the garden shines on the blues and greens of Morris papers and fabrics and old brown hand made furniture, leads one in to a kingdom that can never be created again”

Dorothy Walker’s companion Elizabeth De Haas created the Trust shortly before her death in 1999. Since then the Trust has explored a number of possibilities for the house. After opening to the public in 2005, the Trustees recognised the high level of support for keeping the house and contents together and open to the public. This grant will allow the Trust to move forward with its plans both to preserve the house and collection for the future and to open it up further.

Dr Aileen Reid, Curator, said “This is a house with such a special atmosphere, a true Edwardian time capsule. I am delighted that after so long there is a fighting chance of it being saved.”

May 16, 2008