Tom Ryland Award for Conservation

We are thrilled to announce that we have received the Tom Ryland Award from the Hammersmith Society for the restoration of the Leaning Woman statue.

This has been a fantastic project, with huge local engagement, including over 400 young people involved in visits and creative workshops, and excellent conservation work.

A big thanks to all who supported the project – the St Peter’s Residents Association, the many generous local donors, the Hammersmith & Fulham Historic Buildings Group and Hammersmith Society and Hammersmith & Fulham Council. Our thanks particularly to CMS Cameron McKenna for their support for our grant.

We’ve had wonderfully positive feedback from the project and look forward to it providing many decades of enjoyment & interest!

HOLT Director Dr Nicola Stacey received the award last night from Deputy Mayor Cllr Daryl Brown from Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

In July 2025, the plaque was unveiled at the statue with representatives from all supporters and Liz Ryland in attendance.

Temperance Fountain

We were delighted to be joined by our Royal Patron, HRH The Duke of Gloucester, for the unveiling of the restored Temperance Fountain this week. HOLT and Kensington & Chelsea Council worked together to get this Victorian fountain back into use on Kensington High Street, with fresh drinking water for the public.

The stone fountain was installed in 1900 and paid for by the local Temperance Society, which was dedicated to promoting drinking water over alcohol. Its restoration this summer included replacing missing stonework including the carved cross on top, and reinscribing lettering, as well as brand new piping & taps.

Guests including RBKC Mayor Cllr Will Lane, Cllr Lloyd North, Cllr Catherine Faulks, Giles Semper, CEO of Opportunity Kensington and HOLT Trustee Richard Johnston all sampled the water. Mayor Will Lane and The Duke made speeches.

The fountain hopes to reduce single-use plastic by encouraging residents and visitors to make use of fresh and free water all year round.

Dr Nicola Stacey said “We have been thrilled to work with Kensington & Chelsea Council to restore this beautiful historic fountain – now back in use as a public amenity after so many years. This is one of 12 historic fountains we’ve restored and it’s so great to see passers by making use of it.”  

Cllr Johnny Thalassites, Lead Member Net Zero Council said: “It’s great to see a historic fountain being restored and returned on our high streets that not only provides free drinking water but also helps the environment by reducing the use of plastic. It is a step towards making our amazing spaces greener and more sustainable for all our residents and communities to enjoy.” 

John Newlands's grave

Yesterday we celebrated the restoration of Victorian chemist John Newlands’s grave in West Norwood Cemetery. Newlands (1837 – 1898) was the first to identify the patterns in elements that later became the Periodic Table. His ‘Law of Octaves’ was ridiculed by contemporaries but he published his work in a series of articles from 1864 in Chemical News five years before the Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) announced what we know as the Periodic Table. The Royal Society awarded Newlands the Davy Medal in 1887.

The location of John Newlands’s grave had been lost and the lettering on his grave was barely legible but it has been entirely restored and re-leaded, with over 400 local schoolchildren learning about Newlands and the Periodic Table as part of our Proud Places programme.

The ceremony included Peter, Usha and Tamsin Newlands, the descendants of John Newlands, who had led the campaign to locate and restore his grave, the Royal Society of Chemistry, clinical scientist Professor Bob Flanagan as well as Friends of West Norwood Cemetery. The transformed grave stone was barely recognisable!

See below for a video of the stone masons working to restore the lettering: