Ham Photos is a growing archive of photos of Ham (at the meeting of Richmond upon Thames and Kingston upon Thames in south-west London), where I have lived since 1996. It captures the small changes that are easily missed and delights in the unusual, the unexpected and the unnoticed.
28 November 2018
27 November 2018
Bland house completed
It has taken a few months but the new bland house in Latchmere Close is now finished. Since I last took a photo of it, back in January, the gate and the windows have turned black which has done nothing to improve its appearance. The main problems are there is too much feature-less brick and the equally feature-less windows.
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construction/works,
latchmere
25 November 2018
Orford Place in miniature
Orford Place is the most interesting development locally (Richmond Chase is the largest) and I was an early visitor to the sales centre when I took this picture of a model of the development.
Ham Common is at the top of the picture and the original house is the lighter coloured building in the centre. The buildings on the left are existing ones but the two blocks on the bottom-right are new.
Obviously the specifications of these will be different to the refurbished units and that probably explains why five of the six units there have been reserved already. The one remaining unit, number 22, is described ad a two-bedroom house with sun room, balcony, terrace and garden, and is currently priced at £1,075,000.
24 November 2018
Almost completed
There are several building projects that I am watching closely and this one, at the start of Upper Ham Road, is the one closest to home and so is the one that I pass the most frequently.
The shell of the building has been complete for a few weeks and there is currently little sign of activity. I presume that there is plenty going on and that it is all inside.
23 November 2018
Rear gates to Cassel Hospital
I posted a similar photo of the rear gates to Cassel Hospital a few months ago (February) and I justify adding another one because the entrance is even clearer and it links to the previous photo of the new plants at Physio Extra via the pot on the right.
22 November 2018
21 November 2018
An expected addition
I was expecting this house to gain an extension, and it has. For some time I enjoyed the wildness of the abandoned front garden until new owners came and tidied everything up.
Having reclaimed the house and garden they are now adding what is a fairly standard extension for Burnell Avenue with the house growing on one side and to the front. What matters is the facing that they put on the blocks and I will be looking out for that.
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burnell_ave,
construction/works
20 November 2018
59 Ham Street rises
The two new houses next to the library in Ham Street are growing quite rapidly now and this picture is somewhat out of date but is still valid as the snapshot in time that all the photos here are meant to be.
As is often the case, it's the business of the scene and the industrial feel to it that I like. I am more likely to share a photo of a chocolate box cottage being demolished than one resplendent with roses.
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construction/works,
ham_street
19 November 2018
18 November 2018
17 November 2018
Richmond Chase progresses
The building of Richmond Chase continues southward.
On the east side some large Victorian style houses are being build behind a temporary fence. There are no Victorian houses in the area; this is Tudor not Canbury.
On the west side is a mix of town houses broken up by more Victorian Style houses. There are no other town houses in the area either.
At least for the moment these inappropriate houses are hidden behind a delightful forest of scaffolding.
16 November 2018
New bench for Ham Parade Market
The plaque on this bench says that it celebrates the arrival of Ham Parade Market in October 2017 so it is a little odd that it faces away from the market and towards the traffic. Apparently the organisers wanted it to face the other way but Richmond Council insisted that it should be placed like this.
The bench gets used a lot, not just when the market is there on the first Saturday of each month. If you see a small group of people around it you can be fairly certain that they are playing Pokemon Go as there is a gym there.
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ham_parade,
seats/benches
15 November 2018
14 November 2018
Something unusual lands in Ham Parade
I have absolutely no idea what these things are but given the branding and the location, there used to be a telephone kiosk there, I guess that they are some sort of communications device. I could go and give it a closer look to work out what it does but I am not that interested and I've not seen anyone else go near it either so the feeling seems to be common.
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ham_parade
13 November 2018
12 November 2018
11 November 2018
Remodelling Latchmere House
On most of my visits to Richmond Chase the only signs of work has been on building the new houses and now I can also watch the remodelling of Latchmere House.
This is the view of the front of the house viewed from somewhere near the show house. The approach to Latchmere House used to be quite impressive as it could be seen almost as soon as you turned into Latchmere Close but now there is a wall of housing in the way with only a narrow gap to see through.
The longest view to Latchmere House will be this one, looking up the new road through the centre of the development. It is considerably less attractive and I presume that it will remain so after all the works are finished as the property's listing dictates that little can be done to it.
10 November 2018
Minor works in Arlington Road
There is a story to these two houses in Arlington Road and how they became one but that is a story for somebody else to write, I am just interested in what things look like today. The ending (so far) of that story is a very singular building that looks modern but is actually little different from its neighbours having the original houses hidden underneath the veneer.
The presence of some scaffolding to support some minor works adds more pleasing lines to an already linear building.
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arlington,
construction/works
9 November 2018
A darker green
This house is on Ham Street, one of the snuggled next to Palm Centre. It's neighbour has distinctive light green woodwork, the shade of which one website suggests is "mint", and that makes the whole house really stand out. This one uses a more subtle green and that has let the neat ironwork grab some attention too.
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doors/gates/windows,
ham_street
8 November 2018
7 November 2018
6 November 2018
Ham Close
The future of Ham Close has been under discussion for a few years now and I am not sure how they will end but as the existing buildings may well be demolished I wanted to make sure that I had some decent pictures of it before it goes.
Personally I quite like the buildings as seen from the outside (I have not yet been inside one) and I think that they are made to look worse than they actually are by the bland (or absent) landscaping between them. Wates Estate shows how to do it right but Ham Close refuses to learn that lesson.
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ashburnham_rd,
ham_close
5 November 2018
Typical Wates Estate
A Ham Amenities Group talk on fifty years of Wates Estate prompted me to revisit the area and to take this picture of a fairly typical scene. The housing is attractive enough, if fairly modest in appearance, but what makes Wates Estate so attractive is the overall design that created lots of open spaces between the houses and paths to move around them.
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wates_estate
4 November 2018
3 November 2018
Back to Richmond Chase
I get drawn back to Richmond Chase every few weeks to check on progress and while there is usually little or no change between visits occasionally the work moves on and some more of the development is revealed. On this occasion the next phase of town houses were open for inspection.
The first phase, at the top of the picture, was already occupied and the frontages were stuffed with cars. Sadly this will be the fate of the whole development and the almost car-free views in the sales literature will be a distant memory.
The occupation of the frontages is happening in stages. First, and this is the good bit, a few plants and trees are planted between the houses. Then the bin stores (also missing from the sales literature) arrive and already the sweep of the road is gone. Finally the owners and their cars come and the narrow road just looks messy.
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