Blue is the colour

This house in Beaufort Road stands out like a sore thumb due to the overindulgence in powder blue paint.

Summer House and statue

Winter is a good time for peering over fences and through trees that normally hide things from prying eyes. Here we can see a Summer House and a statue in the rear gardens of houses in Dysart Avenue.

Parakeets

Parakeets are one of the features of Ham and can be seen, and heard, across the whole area. If you look carefully there are three of them in this tree in The Copse.

Morgans is almost finished

The scaffolding on Morgans (on Ham Common) is starting to come down, revealing more of the development as it goes so, and the work looks to be almost completed. For some reason they are leaving tidying up the front of the development to last so it is still unsafe to go on to the site to pry further.

Hornchurch Close

Hornchurch Close in Royal Park Gate is one of the nicer parts of the development. The houses have different finishes and are arranged along curves to avoid the straight lines of identical looking houses that blight many developments, including most of North Kingston. There is limited space in the front of the houses but here the owners have managed to make the most of this through imaginative planting.

Glen Cottage

This is Glen Cottage in River Lane, one of the several interesting buildings in this area.

New fence in Great South Avenue

Work is now well under way on the "improvements" to Great South Avenue and this includes a new wooden fence along the east side at the south end. Hopefully it will soon weather to a darker shade and/or be hidden by plants.

Grounds of Cassel Hospital

The large grounds at the rear of Cassel Hospital are vast and wild. This photograph was taken over the fence along Upper Ham Road.

Beaufort Court

Beaufort Court on Beaufort Road, and therefore close to the river, is typical of what is good about Ham. The blocks of flats are very much of their period and are quite attractive with their regular patterns of windows and balconies against a solid background of warm brick.

The landscaping is what makes this feel like proper Ham. The blocks are well laid out with plenty of space between them and that space has mature trees as well as mixed smaller plants.