The land for the Wormholt Estate was purchased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1919 with construction work on the Wormholt Estate beginning around 1920. The estate when finished consisted of 590 homes and was built on 125 acres of land. It was the Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith’s first major housing development. The estate was partly designed for ex-servicemen although takeup was initially poor.
In 1926–28, the London County Council (LCC) built 783 more houses. Plans for 37 shops were dropped.
The designs of buildings on the estates were influenced by both the Garden City movement and the Arts and Crafts movement. The estate was designed by the LCC’s Architects’ Department, particularly F J Lucas, A S Soutar and J M Corment, using Hampstead Garden Suburb as a reference.
The cottages shared a common style but were deliberately different from each other. While every cottage and maisonette had a scullery and toilet, only the cottages of five and four rooms and a small fraction of the three-roomed cottages were fitted with baths.
The Wormholt estate was declared a conservation area in 1980.
