CLIVE WREN    Architect & Landscape Designer 
Dubhe of Woolwich                                     www.wrenarchitect.co.uk                                         T: 020 8846 9287 
Hope Pier, Lower Mall                                                                                                                     M: 07766 708317
LONDON W6 9DJ                                                                                                                     clivewren@aol.comhttp://www.wrenarchitect.co.ukmailto:clivewren@aol.com?subject=website%20contactshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1

FRIENDS OF FURNIVALL GARDENS

Furnivall Gardens is a post-industrial park first created in 1936 by culverting Hammersmith Creek to provide a setting for the new Town Hall on Nigel Playfair Avenue. After bombing of the area during WWII, the Dove Pier, which was aligned with the central axis of the Town Hall, and Furnivall Gardens were built to celebrate the Festival of Britain in 1951.


When the Great West Road was built later in the 1950’s between the Town Hall and the Gardens the entire riverside area became severed from the town.

 

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Bomb-damage clearance in the 1960‘s enabled the Gardens to be extended eastwards. A Berlin street lamp provided by Willy Brandt, attached to Westcott Lodge, marks the twinning of Neukölln with Hammersmith. A plaque on a nearby tree commemorates the bombing of Nagasaki.


The river wall was raised in the 1960‘s to reduce the risk of tidal flooding. This so obscured views of the river that the Gardens were hardly used until the Council lowered the wall in the 1980’s when the Thames Barrier was completed. Since then the Gardens have become frequented more and more.


Noise and visual intrusion of traffic on the Great West Road, exacerbated by excessive pruning of bushes along the boundary, is one of the most common complaints about the Gardens. The Friends of Furnivall Gardens obtained funding from the Western Riverside Waste Authority in 2013 and planted 30 trees and over 1700 shrubs to reduce the intrusion. The Friends are also pursuing plans to erect a more substantial green acoustic barrier.