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Fulham Leasing

Did You Know?

Fulham were granted professional status December 1898 and in their first entry to the Southern League Division 2, wore a red and white kit inspired by their London neighbours Arsenal - Fulham turned to white and black kits from 1903.

First recorded by name in 691, Fulham was a manor and ancient parish which originally included Hammersmith. Between 1900 and 1965, it was the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham, before its merger with the Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith created the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

Fulham has a history of industry and enterprise dating back to the 15th century, with pottery, tapestry-weaving, paper-making and brewing in the 17th and 18th centuries in present-day Fulham High Street, and later involvement in the automotive industry, early aviation, food production, and laundries. In the 19th-century there was glass-blowing and this resurged in the 21st century with the Aronson-Noon studio and the former Zest gallery in Rickett Street.

Fulham, or in its earliest form "Fulanhamme", is thought to have signified the place either "place of fowls" or "of mud" (which probably had to do with the fact that the River Thames would flood it periodically), or alternatively, "land in the crook of a river bend belonging to an Anglo Saxon chief named Fulla".

There is no record of the original erection of a Parish church in Fulham, but the first written record of a church dates from 1154 as a result of a tithe dispute. The first known parish priest of All Saints Church, Fulham was appointed in 1242. The medieval extant part of All Saints Church was demolished in 1881, during reconstruction by Sir Arthur Blomfield, in order to enlarge it, however, it did not date farther back than the 15th century.

The 19th-century roused Walham Green village, and the surrounding hamlets that made up the parish of Fulham, from their rural slumber and market gardens with the advent first of power production and then more hesitant transport development. This was accompanied by accelerating urbanisation, as in other centres in the county of Middlesex, which encouraged trade skills among the growing population.

Ceramics and weaving in Fulham go back to at least the 17th-century, most notably with the Fulham Pottery, followed by the establishment of tapestry and carpet production with a branch of the French 'Gobelins manufactory' and then the short-lived Parisot weaving school venture in the 1750s.

Fulham remained a predominantly working class area for the first half of the twentieth century, with genteel pockets at North End, along the top of Lillie Road and New King's Road, especially around Parsons Green, Eel Brook Common, South Park and the area surrounding the Hurlingham Club.

Aside from the centuries-old brewing industry, e.g. The Swan Brewery on the Thames, the main activities were motor and early aviation- Rolls Royce, Shell-Mex, Rover, the London Omnibus Co. - and rail engineering (Lillie Bridge Depot), laundries - the Palace Laundry is still extant - and the building trades. Later there was distilling, Sir Robert Burnett's White Satin Gin, food processing, e.g. Telfer's Pies, Encafood and Spaghetti House and Kodak's photographic processing. 

Geoffrey de Havilland, aviation pioneer, built his first aeroplane at his workshop in Bothwell Street, Fulham in 1909. Later, during World War I, Cannon's Brewery site at the corner of Lillie and North End Road was used for aircraft manufacture. The Darracq Motor Engineering Company of Townmead Road, became aircraft manufacturers in Fulham for the Airco company, producing De Havilland designs and components for the duration of the war.

In the 21st-century, Fulham is rated as one of the most expensive parts of London, and therefore the UK; average actual sale price of all property (both houses and flats) sold in the SW6 area in September 2007 was £639,973.

The most considerable entertainment (and sports) destinations in Fulham, after the Lillie Bridge Grounds closed in 1888, have been the 6,000-seater Empress Hall, built in 1894 at the instigation of international impresario, Imre Kiralfy — the scene of his spectacular shows and later sporting events and famous ice shows — and latterly, Earl's Court II, part of the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre in the neighbouring, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.