No barbeques

Wates Estate is notable for its quiet landscaped squares and while they are attractive it never occurred to me that somebody might want to have a barbecue in one but, if they did, then I am not sure that this sign in Mariner Gardens would be much of a deterrent.

Church Road cleared

The extensive clearance work along Church Road has finished with the complete removal of all the little scrub all the way from the road to the boundary, It looks very bleak at the moment and while some of the vegetation, particularly the grass, a lot of the mud will remain and there will still be no path.

Looking the other way the view is even more bleak and we can also see the machine responsible for the final stage of the clearance.

Ham House with tree

It was a rare sunny day when I took this picture of a bare tree in the Kitchen Garden at Ham House showing that even in February there is something good to see in the gardens there.

Leaning wall in Parkleys

An orange plastic barrier has been installed the heavily leaning wall alongside the garages at Brooke Court in Parkleys. You may have to zoom in to see it but the most obvious sign of the leaning is the gap between the pillat and the wall where the stick and the tape are.

Time will tell whether the barrier is just there to keep people away from a wall that might topple over or to herald the start of some repairs.

The Hive rises

The new community centre on Ham Village Green, The Hive, is rising quickly with the help of an impressive crane. I can only hope that the finished result looks better than the illustrations in the posters around it. At least it looks good at this stage before the exterior walls get added.

I have slim hope that they change the name too; "The Hive" has no connection to that location or to Ham and it is also the name of a feature in Kew Gardens only 5km away.

Lost door

It was clear from the structure of the wall of Stokes House in Ham Street that there used to be an entrance up by the house and this has been rediscovered with the removal of the rendering.

I had to take this photo from an acute angle as builders had erected a tight green mesh barrier along the edge of the pavement. I appreciate the need for safety but, as with 35 Ham Farm Road, this sort of barrier makes it difficult to see the interesting things the other side.

Stokes House wall exposed

Over a year ago a section of rendering was removed from the wall of Stokes House in Ham Street to see what lies beneath and, apparently, that led to the decision to remove all of the rendering and to treat the wall in another way.

Early flowers

The strip of Ham Common lying to the east of St Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church does not do much for the area, being dominated by the access roads and the houses, but it does have a few bulbs that provide some early flecks of colour. A lot more bulbs would be nice.

43 Lammas Road

The hoardings at 43 Lammas Road make a mystery of what is going on behind them and while most such mysteries are little more than a few new windows I am still keen to see what eventually emerges.