It is bordered by Shepherd's Bush to the north, Kensington to the east, Fulham to the south and Chiswick to the west, and is linked by Hammersmith Bridge to Barnes in the southwest.
It is the main centre of London's Polish minority in the United Kingdom.
History
There is evidence of occupation of some riverside areas around Hammersmith as far back as Roman and Saxon times, and the area was referred to in the Domesday Book. The name may possibly be a shortening of "Hamoder's Hythe", i.e. the landing-place of a man named Hamoder.
However it was not until the arrival of the railways that the present day district of Hammersmith began to develop. The extension of the Metropolitan Railway to Hammersmith from Paddington in 1864, followed by the District Line in 1874, began a period of considerable expansion and the second half of the 19th century saw a huge increase in population from 10,000 in 1801 to 250,000 in 1901.
Consequently, house construction and industrial development flourished. Major industrial sites included the Osram lamp factory at Brook Green, the J. Lyons factory (which at one time employed 30,000 people) and the largest municipal power station in Britain, built near the gasworks in Sands End.
All these have subsequently been closed and redeveloped as the area has moved from an industrial base to a greater focus on commerce and services.
Geography
Hammersmith is a natural centre of activity, located at the confluence of a key arterial route out of central London (the A4) with several local feeder roads and a bridge over the Thames. The focal point of the district is the commercial centre (the Broadway Centre) located at this confluence, which houses a shopping centre, bus station, an Underground station and an office complex.
Stretching about 750m westwards from this centre is King Street, Hammersmith's main shopping street which contains its second shopping centre (King's Mall), many small shops, the Town Hall, the Lyric Theatre, a cinema and two hotels. King Street is supplemented by other shops along Shepherd's Bush Road to the north, Fulham Palace Road to the south and Hammersmith Road to the east.
Hammersmith's office activity takes place mainly to the eastern side of its centre, along Hammersmith Road and in the Ark, an architecturally-unique office complex to the south of the flyover which traverses the area. The offices of Coca-Cola, Disney, EMI, L'Oreal, Sony Ericsson, World Wrestling Entertainment, AOL UK, and Accor UK are all found in Hammersmith. Two NHS hospitals add to the set of employment activities carried out in Hammersmith - Charing Cross Hospital to the south of the centre on Fulham Palace Road, and Ravenscourt Park Hospital to the west by Ravenscourt Park. Charing Cross Hospital is a large multi-disciplinary hospital with an accident & emergency department and teaching department run by Imperial College London, whilst Ravenscourt Park Hospital specialises in orthopaedics and related surgery.
In addition to the cinema and pubs of King Street, leisure activity also takes place along Hammersmith's pedestrianised riverside, home to a number of pubs, rowing clubs and the riverside park of Furnivall Gardens. Hammersmith also has a large municipal park called Ravenscourt Park located to the west of the centre. Its facilities include ponds, tennis courts, a basketball court and creche. The whole area is covered by the same W6 postcode as Hammersmith town centre.
Culture and entertainment
Hammersmith has a number of attractions;
- Riverside Studios is a cinema, performance space, bar and cafe. Riverside Studios was formerly BBC studios used for TV productions.
- The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre
- The "Hammersmith Apollo" concert hall and theatre (formerly the Carling Hammersmith Apollo, formerly the Hammersmith Odeon).
- The "world famous" Hammersmith Palais nightclub. (featured in The Clash song "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais).
- "The Dove" riverside pub, the oldest surviving riverside pub in London with, reputedly, the smallest bar in the world, frequented in the past by Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene The narrow alley in which it stands is the only remnant of the riverside village of Hammersmith, the bulk of which was demolished in the 1930s. Furnival Gardens, which lies to the east, covers the site of Hammersmith Creek and the High Bridge. The site of the creek can be ascertained by a mound near the Great West Road.
Hammersmith has provided a location for several TV programmes, including the BBC comedy series Bottom, Channel 4's TFI Friday, and the vampire drama Ultraviolet. The opening credits of Bottom show the Hammersmith Broadway (also mentioned in The Pogues' song Dark Streets of London) development, then called Centre West, when it was under construction. In addition, the Flying Squad were Hammersmith-based in the 1970s TV series The Sweeney. Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective contains scenes that appear to be under and adjacent to Hammersmith Bridge. The popular Thames Television series Minder also features black and white photographs of Hammersmith Bridge and the Blue Anchor pub in the closing credits.
News from Nowhere written by William Morris is a utopian novel that describes a journey upstream the River Thames from Hammersmith towards Oxford. Written in 1890, it is of growing interest to contemporary Ecological and Socialist political movements.
In 1930, Gustav Holst composed a work for military band (later rewritten for orchestra) entitled Hammersmith to reflect his impressions of the town, having lived across the river in nearby Barnes for nearly forty years. It begins with a haunting musical depiction of the River Thames flowing underneath Hammersmith Bridge. Holst was a music teacher at St Paul's Girls' School, where he composed many of his most famous works, including The Planets suite. The music wing of the school is named after him.