Page 125
Survey of London: Volume 6, Hammersmith. Originally published by London County Council, London, 1915.
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In this section
LV.—SPIKE HOUSE, No. 161 HAMMERSMITH ROAD
Ground landlord, leaseholders, etc.
The property belongs to the trustees of the Latymer School.
General description and date of structure.
This is a good-sized house probably dating from the 18th century but altered in the 19th. It has an early fanlight over the entrance door, and the iron railings belong to the original house. The porch and balconies are, however, of the Early Victorian period.
Condition of repair.
Good.
Historical and biographical notes.
Spike House occupies the site of one of the parcels of Shortlands "in the Highway Shott" formerly included in Butterwick's Manor, and devised by Latymer in 1624 for the purposes of his educational foundation. (fn. 1). In 1794 it was let to William Keene on a thirty-one years' lease. (fn. 2) According to a footnote in Faulkner's History and Antiquities of . . . Hammersmith (fn. 3) the house was at the time he wrote (1839) occupied by Miss Wright as a boarding school, but the issues of Pigot's London Directory for 1838 and 1846 show the Misses Wright at Sudbury House, so that the footnote has evidently become displaced. On the other hand he gives "Spike" as the name of another tenant of the Latymer Trustees in Hammersmith Road, and we may with confidence adopt him as the eponymous occupier of Spike House.