Venues in Hammersmith
Hammersmith turns its back on the flyover and faces the river — a west London reach of Georgian frontages, theatres and one of the best-known dining rooms on the Thames.
/ About Hammersmith▾
Hammersmith was a riverside village on the north bank west of Chelsea, recorded as Hamersmyth in 1294 and drawn into London as the city spread along the Thames. Upper and Lower Mall keep the evidence: runs of Georgian houses facing the water, with the towpath in front of them. William Morris took Kelmscott House on Upper Mall in 1878 and lived there until his death in 1896, naming the Kelmscott Press after it. Hammersmith Bridge carries the other half of the story — William Tierney Clark built the first suspension bridge over the Thames here in 1827, Joseph Bazalgette replaced it in 1887, and it has been closed to motor traffic since 2019.
The district entertains through its theatres and its river frontage. The Eventim Apollo opened in 1932 as the Gaumont Palace to a design by Robert Cromie, and its art-deco interior is listed Grade II*. The Lyric Hammersmith was founded in 1895 and keeps Frank Matcham’s auditorium, dismantled and rebuilt inside a modern shell in 1979. Riverside Studios began as film studios in 1933, spent three decades as BBC television studios, and reopened rebuilt in 2019. On the water at Thames Wharf, The River Cafe has traded since 1987.
Dining runs from the riverside pubs of the Mall — The Dove has stood on Upper Mall since the seventeenth century — to the restaurants along King Street and Fulham Palace Road. Green space sits on the water at Furnival Gardens, with Ravenscourt Park a few streets north. For access, Hammersmith is one of west London’s principal interchanges: the Piccadilly, District, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines all call here, putting Green Park about fifteen minutes away and Heathrow about half an hour in the other direction.