The garden at No. 7 Hammersmith Terrace



Illuminated manuscript of Robert Browning's poem 'Home Thoughts from Abroad' by Ethel Sandell, nee Offer (fl. 1900-1930)

“I visited 7 Hammersmith Terrace yesterday with two friends and was enchanted with the house and seriously disturbed at the thought that so unique a London interior of the Morris period together with its… pictures, chairs, cabinets, hangings and Morris papers, should be dispersed…. There is now no other Morris interior in London to equal it, nor was there ever a Morris interior to retain so many relics of the Morris movement. Of course, its appeal is as a private house, not a museum, and the way the walls are hung with a mixture of photographs, water colours and illuminated manuscripts and the way the twinkling lights from the Thames at the bottom of the garden shines on the blues and greens of Morris papers and fabrics and old brown hand made furniture, leads one in to a kingdom that can never be created again. This house and its contents must be preserved.”

These words were written by the poet Sir John Betjeman. They were written more than 40 years ago, but they remain true today. When Sir Emery Walker died in 1933 he left the house to his daughter Dorothy, who had grown up with William Morris and Philip Webb and the beautiful objects that they had designed, or that their ideas had inspired. She kept 7 Hammersmith Terrace as much as she could as it had been in her father’s time as did her friend Elizabeth de Haas who inherited the house from her in 1963. For many years Miss de Haas sought to find a solution to what would happen to the house after she died, and in 1996 she approached me at the British Museum, and several colleagues at other institutions which have a particular connection with Emery Walker or the Arts and Crafts, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Victorian Society, the Art Workers Guild, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Society of Antiquaries, with a view to forming a Trust to take over the house at her death.

The result was the Emery Walker Trust founded just four months before Elizabeth’s death in June 1999. The object of the Trust is to conserve, maintain and display 7 Hammersmith Terrace and its contents, and so promote the advancement of the study and appreciation of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Since it was set up, the Trust has created a catalogue of the present building and contents, which it intends to publish. We are committed to maintaining house, garden and collections for the public to visit, but the Trust has very limited financial resources and needs your help. Please click here to see how you can help.

John Cherry
Chairman, The Emery Walker Trust