Take a tour and find out about the development plans for the Earls Court exhibition site

Playing catch-up again... I've just rediscovered the photos I took back in mid-February when I attended a tour of the Earl's Court site. I had booked the ticket back in Summer 2024. The tour starts at The Earls Court Development Company's offices at the end of Empress Place here, where information is freely available to anyone who wanders in.

On the day of the tour the weather was dull and overcast which I found quite apt seeing as I find it so sad that Howard Crane's truly unique Art Deco era exhibition hall was demolished before a definite plan was agreed about what was to replace it. 

This is the header pic from my Deco Demolished presentation that I was hosted through Lockdown and still continue to deliver as an in-person talk for history associations and the like*

But this the wide-open space that exists there now:

The tour is really good – the people leading it are the actual people working on the project and, as such, they can answer lots of questions about what's planned, the existing and new buildings, and how the area will be regenerated. 

The next few pics clearly show how vast the site is. The information boards are really helpful.

I left the site feeling less anxious about the future of this huge development, though it's going to be decades before it is anywhere near finished and many more before it feels established. As per Canary Wharf, I wonder if it will be just a live/work zone that's busy Mon-Fri and dead at the weekends. There will be shops and entertainment facilities etc but, as I have noticed at Battersea, there's barely anyone there most of the time. It's a tall order. Also, will the people who live in the surrounding streets of Fulham and Hamersmith make use of this new environment and how will that impact on the gg-to zones we have already, such as Westfield at ShepBush, Hammersmith and, don't froget, the new re-development currently taking shape at Olympia..?

The scale of how this Earls Court site will look is hard to imagine when you are looking at a wide open space – so, what is it actually going to look like? Well – part of the tour is a visit to a space within the old Met Police office that houses a scale model showing how a good percentage of the new build is being designed to echo the style of existing buildings in the area, and that the street pattern will not be a simple grid. 

The model is fab and it's a shame that this facility is only accessible when on a tour. I suggested that it ought to be open to the public perhaps one morning a week. However, I understand that they will open the facility for group visits on request.

I do think they've missed a trick as regards pulling in little more of the natural environment, specifically a hint to Counters Creek, the river that once ran through here, later replaced by a canal and then filled in to create the Overground line all the way to Chelsea Harbour as Chelsea Creek. Surely a raised rill or similar could have been installed above the tracks below...?

Also in this zone –  the houses on the right/East side of Empress Place are currently home to a variety of talented artists as Empress Studios with open days one weekend  a month

Book your own tour of the Earls Court site here

* This talk comprises over 60 slides, mostly my own photos, of this site and other interwar gems such as The Firestone Building, The Gainsborough, the ABC bakery and The Essoldo cinema on Bethnal Green.  The pic is an adapted uncredited illustration that I found in an old guide book of London.