Category: Housing

Housing history in Ham and Petersham

My gran lived in one of the Almshouses – by MG

One strong memory I have, I went there and she’d died and they had her in the coffin in the bedroom.  My aunt – that was cousin Valerie who I used to go to the pictures with – she was there and she said to me, “Oh, come on, come and see your Gran”, and she took me in.  I think I was about eleven, so really it was quite […]

Sandy Lane and the surrounding area – by VG

There would be some houses in Sandy Lane that people had just moved in, for instance our immediate neighbours at number 18 he was the Borough Treasurer and his wife and son and they’d moved in earlier that year, it was  September 1956 when we moved in, I think they’d moved in at the beginning of the year and were sort of well established and there were some other houses, […]

Building a home in Ham – by VG

Then my husband had a friend who was the architect for the London County Council and he said why don’t you look for some land and have it built.  It won’t cost anymore and it would be appropriate and so my husband wrote to every London borough.  The only two replies he got were from Wandsworth where there was a bomb site, one small space in a terrace of houses […]

Ham development held back by poor transport – by David Williams

Because it has poor transport it wasn’t developed very much in the 19th and early 20th century so it is like it is now not just like an over-built London suburb the contrast being the southern half of Ham which was transferred to Kingston in 1933 which is now the Tudor estate, completely covered by housing.  There is nowhere that was transferred to Kingston in 1933 apart from the Hawker […]

Working in various houses in Ham – by GS

You mentioned an antique shop, was that the antique shop on the Parade?  On the Ham Parade yes, the chap who had it after him, that’s another house that’s just come to mind that I worked in what was his name, that shop has only just closed, Glencorse, yes that’s the one, he took that shop on when John Manussis packed up and he lived on Ham Common on Church […]

‘Mead Road’ short for meadow, housing memories by – GS

When Mead Road was first built, there was only five houses either side of the road in those days, and that would have been built in the early to mid-thirties and it was just meadow land apparently and hence the name “Mead Road” short for meadow.  After a while, my mother told me there were only five houses either side of the road but they then developed it a bit […]

The Richmond/Kingston boundary went through people’s flats – by MS

You see we’re a funny mixture, we’re basically in Richmond but part of the flats when we first came here were in Kingston but it took an arrangement in the end between Richmond and Kingston that Parkleys would be Richmond.  But the boundary actually went through people’s flats!  It was a bit awkward.  I think Ham Farm Road, the plots there got sold and settled before Parkleys, now I know […]

Filling the in the Pits and building the Wates Estate – by PP

I can’t think of anything else except the way the building went on over the Wates Estate.  They had great plastic bubble tents and they built underneath so they could carry on building through the winter. I reckon that’s why some of them are beginning to disintegrate underneath because you can’t mix concrete properly in frosty weather even if you have got a bubble. It started way over there, opposite […]

Developments from Rural Ham in 1953 – by PP

I came to Ham in 1953. We used to live in the little cottage next door to the Royal Oak, as it was then, and behind us, in what is now being redeveloped, the district nurse lived in what was the old stableman’s cottage with … she had her various instruments and things in the ground floor and the big house, Grey Court, was then a day nursery – which […]