The word Fulham originates from Old English, with Fulla being a personal name, and hamm being land hemmed in by water or marsh, or a river-meadow. So Fulla's hemmed-in land. It is spelt Fuleham in the 1066
Domesday Book. In recent years, there has been a great revival of interest in Fulham's earliest history, largely due to the Fulham Archaeological Rescue Group. This has carried out a number of digs, particularly in the vicinity of Fulham Palace, which show that approximately 5,000 years ago
Neolithic people were living by the riverside and in other parts of the area. Excavations have also revealed
Roman settlements during the third and fourth centuries AD.
Manor and Parish of Fulham published in 1746 when apart from the village and palace the still rural nature of the surrounding area is evident. The then new "Fulham Bridge" is the precursor of
Putney Bridge. There are two not necessarily conflicting versions of how Fulham Manor came into the possession of the
Bishop of London. One states the manor (landholding) of Fulham was granted to Bishop
Erkenwald about the year 691 for himself and his successors as Bishop of London. The alternative has it that The Manor of Fulham was acquired by
Bishop Waldhere from
Bishop Tyrhtel in AD 704. Hammersmith was part of the
ancient parish of Fulham up until 1834. Prior to that time it had been a perpetual curacy under the parish of Fulham. By 1834 it had so many residents, a separate parish with a vicar (no longer a curate) and
vestry for works was created. The two areas did not come together again until the commencement of the
London Government Act in 1965. The parish boundary with Chelsea and Kensington was formed by the now culverted
Counter's Creek river, the course of which is now occupied by the
West London Line. This parish boundary has been inherited by the modern boroughs of
Hammersmith & Fulham and
Kensington & Chelsea.
Early history In 879
Danish invaders sailed up the
Thames and wintered at Fulham and Hammersmith.
Raphael Holinshed (died 1580) wrote that the Bishop of London was lodging in his manor place in 1141 when
Geoffrey de Mandeville, riding out from the
Tower of London, took him prisoner. During the
Commonwealth the manor was temporarily out of the bishops' hands, having been sold to Colonel
Edmund Harvey. In 1642,
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, withdrawing from the
Battle of Brentford (1642), ordered to be put a
bridge of boats on the Thames to unite with his detachment in
Kingston in pursuit of
Charles I, who ordered
Prince Rupert to retreat from Brentford back west. The King and Prince moved their troops from Reading to
Oxford for the winter. This is thought to have been near the first bridge (which was made of wood). It was commonly named Fulham Bridge, built in 1729 and was replaced in 1886 with Putney Bridge. Margravine Road recalls the existence of
Brandenburgh House, a riverside mansion built by
Sir Nicholas Crispe in the time of Charles I, and used as the headquarters of
General Fairfax in 1647 during the civil wars. In 1792 it was occupied by
Charles Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach and his wife, and in 1820 by
Caroline, consort of
George IV. His non-political 'wife' was
Maria Fitzherbert who lived in East End House in Parson's Green. They are reputed to have had several children. The extract below of
John Rocque's Map of London, 1746 shows the Parish of Fulham in the loop of the
Thames, with the boundary with Chelsea, Counter's Creek, narrow and dark, flowing east into the river. The recently built, wooden, first Fulham/Putney bridge is shown and two Fulham village clusters, one central, one south-west.
19th century transport and power plays 1889 map - detail showing Lillie Bridge, the two railway lines and Brompton Cemetery The 19th century roused
Walham Green village, and the surrounding hamlets that made up the parish of Fulham, from their rural slumber and market gardens with the advent first of power production and then more hesitant transport development. This was accompanied by accelerating
urbanisation, as in other centres in the county of Middlesex, which encouraged trade skills among the growing population. In 1824 the
Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company, the first public utility company in the world, bought the
Sandford estate in Sands End to produce gas for lighting — and in the case of the Hurlingham Club, for
ballooning. Its ornately decorated number 2
gasholder is
Georgian, completed in 1830 and reputed to be the oldest gasholder in the World. In connection with gas property portfolios, in 1843 the newly formed Westminster Cemetery Company had trouble persuading the Equitable Gas people (a future Imperial take-over) to sell them a small portion of land to gain southern access, onto the
Fulham Road, from their recently laid out
Brompton Cemetery, over the parish border in Chelsea. The sale was finally achieved through the intervention of cemetery shareholder and Fulham resident, John Gunter. in the distance. c. 1860 Meanwhile, another group of local landowners, led by
Lord Kensington with
Sir John Scott Lillie and others had conceived, in 1822, the idea of exploiting the water course up-river from
Chelsea Creek on their land by turning it into a two-mile canal. It was to have a basin, a lock and wharves, to be known as the
Kensington Canal, and link the
Grand Union Canal with the Thames. In reality, however, the project was over budget and delayed by contractor bankruptcies and only opened in 1828, when railways were already gaining traction. The short-lived canal concept did however leave a legacy: the creation on Lillie's land of a brewery and residential development, 'Rosa', and 'Hermitage Cottages', and several roads, notably, the
Lillie Road connecting the canal bridge, (
Lillie Bridge) at
West Brompton with North End Lane and the eventual creation of two railway lines, the
West London Line and the
District line connecting South London with the rest of the capital. This was done with the input of two noted consulting engineers,
Robert Stephenson in 1840 and from 1860,
Sir John Fowler. In 1907 the engineering HQ of the
Piccadilly Line in Richmond Place (16-18 Empress Place) oversaw the westward expansion of the line into the suburbs. At the turn of the century, the
London Omnibus Co in Seagrave Road oversaw the transition of horse-drawn to motor buses, which were eventually integrated into
London Transport and
London Buses. This attracted a host of other automotive enterprises to move into the area. The last farm to function in Fulham was Crabtree Farm, which closed at the beginning of the 20th century. A principal recorder of all these changes was a local man,
Charles James Féret (1854-1921), who conducted research over a period of decades before publishing his three volume history of Fulham in 1900.
Art and Craft Ceramics and weaving in Fulham go back to at least the 17th century, most notably with the
Fulham Pottery, followed by the establishment of tapestry and carpet production with a branch of the French 'Gobelins manufactory' and then the short-lived
Parisot weaving school venture in the 1750s.
William De Morgan, ceramicist and novelist, moved into Sands End with his painter wife,
Evelyn De Morgan, where they lived and worked. Another artist couple, also members of the
Arts and Crafts movement, lived at 'the Grange' in
North End,
Georgiana Burne-Jones and her husband,
Edward Burne-Jones, both couples were friends of
William Morris. Other artists who settled along the
Lillie Road, were
Francesco Bartolozzi, a florentine engraver and
Benjamin Rawlinson Faulkner, a society portrait painter.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, the French expressionist painter and friend of
Ezra Pound, lived in
Walham Green till his early death in 1915. Glass production was, until recently, represented by the
stained glass studio of the purpose-built and
Grade II listed Glass House in Lettice Street and latterly, by the Aaronson Noon Studio, with the 'Zest' Gallery in Rickett Street, that was obliged to shut down in 2012, after 20 years by the developers of 'Lillie Square' and
Earl's Court. Both glass businesses have now moved out of London. The Art Bronze Foundry, founded by Charles Gaskin in 1922 operated in Michael Road, off the
New King's Road, a short distance from
Eel Brook Common until it gave way to an apartment redevelopment in 2017. It had produced works by
Henry Moore,
Elisabeth Frink,
Barbara Hepworth and
Jacob Epstein among others. Its work may be seen in public spaces all over the world.
20th century HQ, last block on the left of street lab. site in Rylston Road, Fulham In 1926, the Church of England established the office of
Bishop of Fulham as a
suffragan to the Bishop of London. Fulham remained a predominantly working-class area for the first half of the 20th century, with genteel pockets at North End, along the top of Lillie and New King's roads, especially around
Parsons Green,
Eel Brook Common, South Park and the area surrounding the
Hurlingham Club. Essentially, the area had attracted waves of immigrants from the countryside to service industrialisation and the more privileged parts of the capital. The
Metropolitan Asylums Board acquired in 1876 a 13-acre site at the bottom of Seagrave Road to build a fever hospital,
The Western Hospital, that later became an
NHS centre of excellence for treating
polio until its closure in 1979. Bar one ward block remaining in private occupation, it was replaced by a gated-flats development and a small public space, Brompton Park. Aside from the centuries-old brewing industry, exemplified by the Swan Brewery on the Thames, the main industrial activities involved motoring and early aviation —
Rolls-Royce,
Shell-Mex & BP,
Rover, the
London General Omnibus Company — and rail engineering (
Lillie Bridge Depot), laundries — the Palace Laundry is still extant — and the building trades. Later there developed distilling, Sir Robert Burnett's
White Satin Gin, food processing, e.g. Telfer's Pies, Encafood and
Spaghetti House, and
Kodak's photographic processing. This encouraged the southern stretch of
North End Road to become Fulham's unofficial
"High street", almost a mile from the actual
Fulham High Street, with its own department store, F.H. Barbers, along with
Woolworths,
Marks & Spencer and
Sainsbury's outlets, all long gone. The second ever
Tesco shop opened in the North End Road. The UK's reputedly oldest independent
health-food shop, opened in 1966 by the
Aetherius Society, still trades on
Fulham Road. Allied to these developments, the
postwar period saw the extensive demolition of Fulham's early 19th-century architectural stock, replaced by some
Brutalist architecture — the current Ibis hotel — and the
Empress State Building in Lillie Road that in 1962 replaced the declining Empress Hall. The
London County Council and local council continued with much-needed council-housing development between
World War II and up to the 1980s. Fulham has undergone significant gentrification since the late 20th century, when professionals and families—drawn by its Victorian housing and riverside setting—began arriving. This early wave of change gained momentum through the 1990s, and by the 2000s Fulham had firmly established itself as one of London’s most desirable Zone 2 neighbourhoods, combining a village‑like character with upgraded housing stock, affluent amenities, and well‑regarded schools.
Piece of aviation history Geoffrey de Havilland, aviation pioneer, built his first aeroplane at his workshop in Bothwell Street, Fulham in 1909. Later, during the
First World War, Cannon's Brewery site at the corner of Lillie and North End Road was used for aircraft manufacture. The
Darracq Motor Engineering Company of Townmead Road, became aircraft manufacturers in Fulham for the
Airco company, producing De Havilland designs and components for the duration of the war.
Musical heritage William Crathern, the composer, was organist at St Mary's Church, West Kensington, when it was still known as
North End.
Edward Elgar, the composer, lived at 51 Avonmore Road, W14, between 1890 and 1891. The notorious Italian tenor
Giovanni Matteo Mario de Candia and his wife opera singer
Giulia Grisi, made Fulham their home from 1852 until the 1900s at a lovely country-manor where their daughters and son were born, among them writer
Cecilia Maria de Candia. Conductor and composer
Hyam Greenbaum married the harpist
Sidonie Goossens on 26 April 1924 at Kensington Registry Office and they set up home in a first floor flat on the Fulham Road, opposite
Michelin House.
Redevelopment , Earl's Court Two in H&F and Earl's Court One in RBKC With the accession of
Boris Johnson to the mayoralty of London, a controversial 80 acre high-rise redevelopment has been under way on the eastern borough boundary with the
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, involving the dismantling of the two
Earl's Court Exhibition Centres in RBKC and in Hammersmith and Fulham and the emptying and demolition of hundreds of commercial properties, thousands of both private and social housing units and including the demolition of a rare example in Fulham of mid-Victorian housing, designed by
John Young, close to Grade I and II listed structures and to a number of conservation areas in both boroughs. It also involves the closure of the historic Lillie Bridge Depot, opened in 1872 and the dispersal of its operations by
TfL ==Politics==