Our Patch Summer 2017 Hammersmith & Shepherds Bush | Page 5

Our Patch summer 2017 One of the beds in Emery Walker House arts & crafts restored gem is open once again Having a laugh. Clockwise from left: Nina Conti, Shaun Keaveny, Me & My Bee and Fin Taylor joke is this? of Time Out’s comedy show of the year. Or for something a little different, catch the Gein’s Family Giftshop, a quartet performing routines on the lines of the League of Gentlemen. Nish Kumar, a regular on Live at the Apollo, is one of the best comedians on the circuit, and performs a one-hour show on June 3 at 6.30pm. Tim Key, the stand-up performance poet, follows at 8pm (tickets from £18). The fourth and final day of the festival, Sunday June 4, includes two free workshops where wannabe comics and sketch artists can pick up tips from Lee Griffiths of the Soho Theatre. Me & My Bee, by theatre company ThisEgg, campaigns to save bees, one at a time, by persuading people to join the Bee Party. Afternoon and evening comedy headliners are Tom Allen, Spencer Jones and Joe Lycett, before The Guilty Feminist, Deborah Frances-White, rounds everything off at 8.30pm, recording her comedy podcast with a live audience, helped by Susan Wokoma and Somalia Seaton. The Shepherds Bush Comedy Festival, presented jointly by Hammersmith & Fulham Council and PBJ management, is a great introduction to the new-look, fully accessible Bush Theatre, with all of the family-friendly shows free of charge. Visit bushtheatre.co.uk or call the box office on 020 8743 5050. A fter an 18-month restoration, the nation’s most perfectly preserved Arts & Crafts house has reopened. Sir Emery Walker’s home at 7 Hammersmith Terrace has a new roof, ensuring items such as William Morris’s library chair can be admired by future generations. More than £1million has been spent on the house where the typographer and friend of Morris lived from 1903 to 1933. Funding is from the Heritage Lottery via Arts & Crafts Hammersmith, working with the William Morris Society. The building reopened in April with the cutting of a Morris patterned ribbon. Around 6,000 items were conserved and catalogued while the crew was at work, with everything back in place, as it looked in the time of Sir Emery (inset; picture courtesy Emery Walker Trust). The building is a superb example of Arts & Crafts styling and an exhibition space for Morris textiles, wallpaper and embroidery. Prized items include the library chair (dating from the 1600s), a stylised portrait of May Morris by Edward Burne- Jones and ceramics by William de Morgan. Emery But there are quirky Walker items, too, from the era when Arts & Crafts leaders gathered; a lock of Morris’s hair, a mould of Philip Webb’s ears! Guided pre-booked tours of Emery Walker’s House at 7 Hammersmith Terrace are held three times a day (11am, 1pm and 3pm) on Thursdays/Saturdays, with numbers limited to eight per tour. emerywalker.org.uk