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Ken believed that correcting society's ills began
immediately and locally, a commitment that saw his involvement with
building good homes in his neighbourhood for mentally damaged children
and with the refurbishments of Teddington Hospital.
Above all, Ken's socialist principles explain his untiring efforts
to retain local land for local use within the community, and which
led to his 25 year crusade for the development of Twickenham town
centre and the riverside site of the old baths for the benefit of
local people.
This campaign reached a milestone at Richmond's planning committee
when his application for a park and recreational/voluntary use of
the borough-owned area was commended by planning officers when it
came up for decision.
Over the years Ken fiercely and persistently questioned the loss
of local authority-owned land to private buyers, specifically the
sale of Fulwell Golf Club, the sale of land and granting of planning
permission to Squires, the loss of the Ice Rink in East Twickenham
to luxury housing development and the sale of Hampton Court House.
He also remained an enthusiastic organiser, deliverer and canvasser
in every election, local and national, for his party.
Ken was 16 when he joined an architectural firm in Oxford to embark
on a qualification leading to Associate of the Royal Institute of
British Architects through part-time study - a gruelling route.
He was still very young when he won a National Annual Architectural
Award for designing the Neath Civic Centre. He designed and built
his own house on a plot of land - still charmingly wooded and rural
- in Strawberry Hill, where he has lived with his family since 1959.
Those who support his ethos and his work will continue to pursue
the application he submitted for the riverside park, possibly to
be called the Ken Hathaway Memorial Park, and its achievement would
be a uniquely fitting memorial to his years of service to the community.
With thanks to Twickenham Online and Mrs May Hathaway.
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