Learning about The Buildings of Ham Common

My favourite community events, by a country mile, are the local architecture walks and talks given by local architect Richard Woolf and organised by local community group Ham United Group so I was delighted to join his tour of The Buildings of Ham Common.

Ham Common, unsurprisingly, is the heart of Ham and it is ringed by an interesting collection of buildings from old cottages to substantial modern lodges. Richard squeezed eighteen of them into a fact-filled, informative and entertaining walk.

Here we see Richard explaining the rise of Neo-Georgian (Neo-Geo) houses and how the few examples on Ham Common sit uneasily with their grander Georgian neighbours.

I know the buildings on Ham Common pretty well and have photographed them all, often many times, for my community blog HamPhotos, but I was still absorbing new insights on their design and construction at a prodigious rate of knots.

This was a fascinating talk and it ended on the best possible note, Richard promised to do another walk and talk next year.