Arts and Crafts Hammersmith Launch New Website for New Year

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Lottery funded project highlights influence of William Morris and Sir Emery Walker

Arts & Crafts Hammersmith have launched a new website for the New Year, highlighting West London’s rich artistic heritage.

The website is part of a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) supported project, worth £1million, that aims to reveal the continuing impact of the Arts & Crafts Movement in West London. Thanks to the support from National Lottery players, it demonstrates how many artists and craftsmen were drawn to Hammersmith in the late 19th century to be near its two most influential protagonists – William Morris and Sir Emery Walker.

The website launches as the William Morris Society’s premises at 26 Upper Mall and Emery Walker’s House at 7 Hammersmith Terrace reach the end of major renovation and refurbishment. Visitors to the website will be able to find out more about both men, their lives, friendships, homes, work and continuing influence, through a range of activities from visits to the respective historic houses, learning and participation initiatives, and opportunities for volunteering.

And you may be inspired to walk off the New Year’s excesses by following in their footsteps with an online heritage trail. This takes you along the Thames Path between Hammersmith Terrace, where Walker lived to just before Furnival Gardens, where Morris had set up home at Kelmscott House, a trip both men made every day for six years when they called in on each other. Now you can walk along the riverside route, using the website to find out about the various artists and social activists who have lived along this scenic path over the years.

Arts & Crafts Hammersmith are looking for volunteers to join their friendly team, so take a look at their website and see if you’d like to make helping out at this fascinating, local heritage project one of your new year’s resolutions!