London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
The Thames curves through Hammersmith and Fulham in a way that makes you aware of it constantly — glimpsed at the end of streets, crossed on Bazalgette's ornate suspension bridge, walked along through Bishops Park where the bishops of London once kept their garden. This is a borough of working riverfront and Victorian terraces, where Shepherd's Bush Market still trades under railway arches as it has since 1914, and where the Eventim Apollo on Queen Caroline Street has hosted enough legendary nights to fill a music encyclopaedia.
Fulham and Hammersmith sit side by side with distinct personalities — Fulham quieter, more residential, anchored by its ancient palace; Hammersmith louder, a transport hub that funnels the Piccadilly, District, Central and Hammersmith & City lines through its core. Heathrow is thirty minutes west. The West End is a short ride east. The borough lives between those two poles, comfortable in its own skin.
💛 What travellers fall for
Regulars tend to find their way to the Dove on Upper Mall — a 17th-century pub that has been an inn since 1796, with a river terrace narrow enough to make strangers talk. From there, the walk along the Thames Path toward Bishops Park earns its own repeat visits, especially on a low-tide morning when the mudlarkers are out.
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Book directly at the providerHow London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham came to be
Fulham's story starts early. In 704 AD, Bishop Waldhere of London acquired a place recorded as 'Fulanham' from the Bishop of Hereford, and the manor remained in episcopal hands for over a thousand years — Fulham Palace served as the bishops' residence until 1973. Hammersmith took longer to establish its own identity, gaining a separate vestry only in 1631 when it was carved out of Fulham as a civil parish.
The two were brought together administratively in 1965 to form the London Borough of Hammersmith, renamed Hammersmith and Fulham in 1979. In between, the borough accumulated an unlikely density of history: the 1908 Olympic marathon finished at White City Stadium; Wormwood Scrubs prison, built by its own future inmates between 1874 and 1890, still stands; and William Morris spent eighteen years at Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, designing and agitating in equal measure.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
London's weather applies here in full — mild and overcast for much of the year, with the Thames adding a particular dampness in winter. The riverside walk is best in late spring and early autumn, when the light on the water justifies the trip on its own terms.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.