This photograph looks southwards across the construction site now occupied by the building known today as The Old Court House, formerly Richmond-upon-Thames Magistrates Court and currently serving as offices for distillers William Grant & Sons Ltd. The site was occupied previously by the Parkshot Rooms, built c1905 and first used as the offices of the Richmond Board of Guardians, and the public baths building. Prior to that, number 8 Parkshot was a Georgian house where the author George Eliot lodged between 1855 and 1859. It may have resembled the terrace of early Georgian houses visible here beyond the site to the right at 4, 5 and 6 Parkshot, with the side of number 6 nearest the site perimeter. The houses were Grade II listed in 1968, listing number 1357756; at that time they served as an entrance to the Salem Baptist Church, which occupied the site to the rear of these buildings until it moved to Windsor Road, Kew, in 1973. The chapel, warehouse, stable buildings, and rear extensions to the right of view were demolished around the same time as this redevelopment and the front elevations of the terrace restored to something more like its original appearance. The view shows a deep shored excavation with steel mesh and other sundry building materials and a single construction worker without the helmet or hi-viz jacket required to work on site today. Parkshot is in the Richmond Central conservation area of the Borough.
