Chelsea

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Ashburnham Road

Cremorne Gardens was the garage for the Red Rover Bus. Co. until 1920s 1977 filling station VP now in Aylesbury only had one vehicle in London. Gardens opened by the council in 1982.on part of the old pleasure grounds.

Beaufort Street.

Site of Beaufort House, reputed to be the site of the house of Sir Thomas More,who bought an estate in Chelsea in 1520, and lived hereafter his resignation from the Chancellorship in 1552. The actual site is in doubt but Beaufort House, which faced Battersea Bridge, is themost generally accepted site. Formerly the mansion of the Duke of Beaufort, it was purchased in 1736 by Sir Hans Sloane for £2.500 at a publicsale, and was pulled down in 1740. It was laid out in 1766 after Beaufort House had been demolished. Rebuilt in 20^th, and consists largely of blocks of artisans', dwellings facedwith red brick. 

St Thomas More Buildings most prominent buildings today the first new housing built by the borough, five hefty blocks of flats, 1903-4 by Joseph &  Smithem.  Red brick cheerfully embellished with stone quoins and some carving, and varied gables, although nothing like as picturesque as L.C.C. work of this time. It was built to provide 261 self-contained tenements, with eight bathrooms and a drying-room in one of the basements.

Contemporary red brick terraces opposite built for better-off artisans by the Metropolitan Industrial Dwellings Co.

114 General Gordon

20 Morgan 280

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7  Mrs. Gaskell lived here in the 1820s

91-100 best of Chelsea, good throughout

Diocesan training college

Burnaby Street

32 Chelsea Ram

Burnaby Street

32 Chelsea Ram

Cathcart Road

A tiny enclave of pure modernism

24 by Casson Gander Partnership, 1963,

20 by C.J.G.  Gut, 1975, clad in reflecting vitreous panels and full of the progressive middle-class urban spirit of Le Corbusier.

Chelsea

Called because of gravel cast up from the river.  Something between a chalk wharf and a gravel bank. ‘Caellchyth’ 767, ‘Celchyth’ 789  in Anglo-Saxon charters, ‘Chelched’ 1086 in the Domesday Book, ‘Chelchuthe’ 1300, ‘Chelsey’ 1556, that is probably -landing place for chalk from old English ‘ceaic’ - perhaps influenced by an i-mutated - 'chalk place' and ‘hyth’. The spelling ‘Ca-Kchyth’ suggests early rationalization and confusion with a different word. Old English ‘cxlic’ - 'cup, chalice'. Chalk, much valued as a commodity in early times for increasing crop yields as well as for building and limeburning, was probably shipped up the Thames from Chalk near Gravesend then unloaded and transported for use on the clayey Middlesex fields as well as in the City.  There was formerly a hamlet called Little Chelsea marked thus on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822 and recorded as ‘Little Chelcy’ in 1655 at the west side of the parish on the Fulham Road.  Farmland until the 1520s.

Chelsea Basin,

Note on GLC development and proposal for road alongside the railway, Grade II ecology site Features in films 'Morgan’.

Chelsea Dock

Chelsea Fields

The Dwarf's

Chelsea Harbour

Pier private new

Deals

Belvedere tower

Chelsea Park Gardens

Named for the park, which was once there. Part of More estate. Part of Chelsea Vestry Road. 1885/83 John Bunyan

A modestly picturesque redevelopment on part of the Sloane Stanley estate with groups of small houses in grey and red brick with a variety of gables and tiled mansards, begun in 1913 but mostly built in 1923-8, by E. F. M. Elms and Sydney Jupp

 6 Manning

Chelsea,

Called because of gravel cast up from the river

The Gateway, Chelsea

Cheyne Place

Cheyne Walk

Many houseboats moored. Features in films 'I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name’, Otley’, ‘Goodbye Gemini’, .

Chelsea Yacht and Boat Company. Features in films 'The Deadly Affair’.

Church Rpad BATTERSEA

Garden Wharf, May and Baker started here next to the candle works. John May had joined a pharmacist called Price here in 1834.  Moved to Church Road.

Counters Creek

Chelsea Creek. Features in films 'B.Monkey’,’The Optimists’.

Went from Kensal Green to Chelsea Creek canalised 1842.

Also called Bull Creek from parallel Bull Alley. On the line of the railway. On the south side creek waters still there. Bridge side Railway Bridge over the culverted part of the creek. Vertical embankment decreases in height to less than 1 meter and vegetation and herons. George Stephenson wanted to make it a freight rail/barge interchange. Line built and worked from 1844. Connection to London & Birmingham.

Kensington Canal dated from 1828, when Counter’s Creek, a former tidal estuary of the Thames, was made navigable.  By 1836 it had proved unprofitable and was sold to the Birmingham and Great Western Railways, and in 1859 it was finally filled in to make way for the West London extension line. 

Cremorne Estate

Dreary streets between Lots Road, King's Road, and CheyneWalk built upon the site of Cremorne Gardens, which untilclosed in 1877 was one of London's principal summer pleasure resorts. Many houses have been destroyed by bombing. Chelsea Boroughcouncil developing a new housing estate. The borough's major post-war redevelopment. Armstrong & Manus produced a master plan in 1948 for rebuilding with 809 dwellings; work began in 1949 with flats in Riley Street planned already in 1944. The main feature of the estate is a series of typically neat but uninspiring 1950s slabs ranged behind a low, austere terrace with shops along the s side of King's Road

The Cremorne Estate originally Chelsea Farm, and in 1751 bought by the Dowager Countess of Exeter. . Devolved in 1803 to Viscount Cremorne. Grounds opened to the public, opened as a pleasure garden. Covered sixteen acres and much livelier than Vauxhall even on its most brilliant nights, and splendid displays of fireworks were given here. Amongst other attractions were a theatre, circus, an outdoor orchestra, grottoes, and dining-hall.1845 numerous balloon ascents were made by Mr. and Mrs. Green. A later attempt at aerial navigation by a Mr. de Groof resulted in disaster, for when the apparatus was suspended beneaththe car of a balloon, and the machine was liberated, it immediately collapsed owing to some defect in its construction, and fell to the groundwith a terrible crash, instantly killing its unfortunate occupant

Cremorne Gardens

Created in 1982. Re-erected here is the fine white-painted wrought-iron gateway withthe royal arms that stood at the King's Road end of the originalgardens, which belonged to Lord Cremorne's house and wereopen as a public pleasure ground between 1845 and 1877.

Cremorne Road

Cremorne Wharf

Features in films 'Morgan’.

Edith Grove

Edith was Günter’s daughter who died in childhood

102 Mick Jagger, Keith and Brian shared a flat

Finborough Road

Many houses in this mdistrict have been destroyed or damaged in the blitz of 1940

Fulham Road

Horner’s

St.Mark's College, Neo.Georgian, 1910

8 where Alfred Gilbert made Eros

76 The Avenue. Group of 15 artists studios in the late 19th

77 Joseph.  Became the Conran first Habitat store in 1964.

81 Michelin Tyre Depot with painted walls and tiles 1911. Offices above.  The Michelin building was designed by F. Espinasse. It was begun in 1905 and further extended in 1910. The Company's merchandise was wittily advertised by the architectural motifs on the motoring theme with cupolas resembling piles of tyres, motor-car wheels in the pediments and tiled illustrations of cars and bicycles decorating the pillars. Even though the Michelin Man no longer adorns the top of the main window, his origins are clearly implicit in the rest of the decor that survives. Bedford Lemere, 1910. Bibendum restaurant opened here.

241 Features in film ‘The Football Factory’,

268 Redcliffe

Gunter Estate pastry cook own house called Currant Jelly Hall. Most street names in the area called after his estates in Yorkshire. Edith daughter.

369, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital developed on the site of St.Stephen's Hospital founded at 1876. It was called St. George's Union Infirmary for the school of St.George's and St.Mary's, Wanstead. balloons put on walls inside. changed to St.Stephen's by Enid Blyton's husband ,who worked at the hospital. transferred to London County Council from Westminster Board of Guardians  Features in films 'Jack and Sarah’, ‘Spice World’, ‘Sliding Doors’, ‘If Only’, ‘Five Seconds to Spare’,  ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.

Shellmex Garage, This was a large servicing station built in the early 1920s with room for a great variety of vehicles as well as pieces of equipment like the motor-repair stand shown in the foreground. The extensive skylights ensured the maximum of natural daylight. Notices to the staff begged them not to smoke and to 'Be Clean'.

Gunter Grove

Many houses in this mdistrict have been destroyed or damaged in the blitz of 1940,

Hobury Street

7 home of George Meredith OM 1828-1909 'poet and novelist lived here' . Meredith was born in Portsmouth and educated in Germany. In London he became a solicitor before turning his hand to writing. This did not bring about much financial reward and he had to rely on his wife's money to aid the housekeeping. He had married, in 1849, a rich widow, who decided they were no  match for one another and so parted. In 1885 "Diana of the Crossways" was published, and he was on his way to becoming a popular novelist. But it didn't last. His books became fewer, his style pedantic and less readable. Plaque erected 1976.

Hollywood Road

Hollywood Arms splendid pub of 1865a fanciful Gothic building in the manner of RedcliffeSquare, probably by the Godwins;

8 Hollywood Bookshop

Hortensia Road,

Was one of the boundaries of the College of St.Luke and St.John, Hortense was a Duchess of Mazarin

Sloane School, neo-Georgian, 1908

Ifield Road

Many houses in this mdistrict have been destroyed or damaged in the blitz of 1940

Kelvedon Road:

Lutheran Chapel German church until 1WW when it was closed and became spiritualist church. Original German foundation stone still there

Kings Road

North side between Arthur Street and CarlyleSquare was site of King's Parade. Built 1810 on site of farmhouse where in 1771 where following a robbery and murder.  Which led to Jews in Chelsea being targets of violence.

Past the World's End Tavern is the bridge over the West London Railway, which forms the dividing line between Chelsea and Fulham.  The West London Railway follows the track of the former Kensington Canal,

The Porticos. An earlier effort at improved working-class housing now very select, but originally built in 1885 by Elijah Hoole for the Chelsea Park Dwellings Company as sixty labourers' dwellings, complete with central garden, 'in rural style ... to avoid the barrack-like appearance too common in industrial dwellings' . Two three-storey ranges, the one to the street conspicuously picturesque (though hardly rural), with shop below giant red brick Gothic arches, tile hanging and patterned roughcast above.       

355, a custard-coloured tower built as council flats by Chamberlain Powell 1969, revamped by Fitch &• Co. in 1988 as private flats with new top floor and new cladding to hide the problematic load bearing  brickwork  

372 La Bersagliera. Features in films '’Dracula AD 1972’  as ‘The Cavern’

400, Kings House, of c.1900, looks cheerful with brick and stone chequer upper floor,

Water Rat, a sweet stuccoed pub, marks

Moravian Burial Ground. A large pair of gates marks the entrance of what was once part of the grounds of Lindsey House. . The trees are in a private garden, established around the former stables of Beaufort House when Moravians occupied Lindsey House. Here the Countess of Huntingdon had a house, and the Moravians settled on land bought in 1750 by James Hutton from Sir Hans Sloane. only the burial ground remains, at the junction of the King's Road and Milman Street. It is divided Moravian-fashion into four plots – for married men and women and single men and women. Here lie Peter Bohler, Wesley's spiritual mentor during his search for faith in 1738; James Hutton, bookseller and leader of the Fetter Lane Society; and John Cennick, Wesley's first lay preacher, best remembered for his hymns. But the flat stones are weathered and hard to decipher. This is the site of Sir Thomas More's house, which later came into the hands of Sir Hans Sloane and was demolished in 1740. Features in films '’The Lion at World’s End’.

World's End. Effervescent, pub rebuilt in 1897, which has happily survived the road-widening schemes, and steps out with florid bows and corner turret

536 breaks the mid c 19 terraces broken offices with flats behind, 1979 by Sir John Burnet Tait & Partners, built on the site of a brewery. Their plain brick bulk uncomfortably at odds with the quite elegantly detailed groups of stuccoed houses outliers of the classier Gunter estate development

577 Imperial Pub.  Haggard’s Brewery set up by Haggard Brothers.City gents,for the pub.

Police Station. Was on the corner of Milman’s Street. Now gone. Features in films '’Lost’, ‘Sapphire’, ‘Victim’.

siteof Chelsea & Fulham station.West London Extension Railway Station situated on thenorth side of the famous Kings Road. Built in 1863, called ‘Chelsea’ Station although it is in Fulham. 1903 renamed ‘Chelsea and Fulham’ . Never busy and usually just used by Chelsea football crowds. In October 1940 bombed and burnt out. crumbling remains of the northbound platform, flanked by a brick wall,erected around this time, bear silent testimony to a completely different London.. Station remains still left in the boundary wall of the new flats. Never reopened and flats on the site

Lamont Road

The main route through a neat grid of stucco terraces

Limerston Road

A council development of 1954-8 (Chelsea Borough Engineer's Department), intended to be in keeping with Chelsea traditions: mostly flats, including eight studios, but tactfully disguised as semi-detached villas

Little Chelsea

Settlement which grew up in the 17^th on the road between Chelsea and the Bishop’s Palace at Fulham.  The district to the north of King's Road, extending to the West LondonRailway, was formerly known as Little Chelsea. Until about 1860 it stillremained more or less a rural hamlet in its general character. It commenced west of Chelsea Park, now Elm Park Gardens, and had its centrein Fulham Road, at the corner of Beaufort Street, leading to BatterseaBridge.

On 16 April 1765 Mr. James House Knight, of Walham Green,returning home from London was robbed and murdered on the FulhamRoad in the vicinity of Little Chelsea. A reward of £50 was offered forthe discovery of the murderers, and on 7 July following two Chelsea pensioners were committed to prison charged with the murder on the evidence of their accomplice, another Chelsea pensioner, whom they hadthreatened to kill as the result of a quarrel which took place between them.  The accused were tried, found guilty, hanged and gibbeted.

Lots Road

Area called the 'Lots''Lots' of ground for people called Lammas Rights

Power station. this station supplied electricity for London Transport railways in the central London area. When it first built in 1904 it was the largest power station in the world and the chimneys the tallest in Europe.  The original plant had Babcock & Wilcox water tube boilers on the first and second floors, unusual in England then.  they supplied steam to 10 Westinghouse-Parsons turbines driving 5phase generators the largest sets built at the time.  The building has a steel frame filled with terracotta and brick. American Charles T. Yerkes was responsible setting this station up to supply power to the Metropolitan and District Railway, the Baker Street & Waterloo, Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead and Great Northern & Piccadilly tubes and the Brompton Railway, also the Central London Railway in emergency. New plant was installed in the early 1960's, consisted of 6 Babcox & Wilcox superheater boilers the first of their type commissioned in this country.  Cooling water is drawn from the Thames where flat fish testify to the purity of the Thames. Water to make up losses in the recycling system is obtained from an artesian well. The 1935 control room was situated over- looking the turbine hall and this room maintained much of its original appearance. the present day control room is in a separate building. Lost two chimneys in 1960s.

Gates to site of Cremorne Gardens closed 1877. Originally called Chelsea Farm. Owned by Duchess of Exeter and then Viscount Cremorne. Balloon ascents, 1845, by Green and Groof, who was killed.

Ashburnham House

Kensington destructor near the disposal works, 1894. Salopian Wharf, 1880. Refuse Disposal Co. sorting and barging Kensington and Chelsea waste. All refuse sorted and sold - sieved in a cylinder and then sorted but smells from the chimney.

Lots Road Dock, Chelsea Canal, 1900s

LT stores

114 Lots Road Pub and Dining was previously the Ferrett and Firkin in a Balloon Up the Creek and before that Balloon Tavern because if balloons which went from there in 1859.  Features in films 'Castaway’

116 Features in films 'The Deadly Affair’.

Chelsea Wharf. Is an example of revived old warehouse buildings and was converted in 1979

Mallord Street

Mallord is the name used by Turner

6

5, 6 two taller houses. Bays with integral garage, is by W. D. Caroe, 1912, for Pern Morris of Elm Park Gardens a benefactor of St Peter, Cranleigh intended at first for his coachman.

13 home of A.A.Milne when it was no 11. Here, he wrote most of his works. Plaque erected 1979. Christopher Robin was born there.
28 built for Augustus John in 1913.  the studio at the back was concealed behind a trim Dutch vernacular front.. Plaque erected 1981. Later the home of Gracie Fields

Mallord House is a studio house of 1911 for Cecil Hunt by Ralph Knott, the architect of County Hall, strikingly austere but well detailed version of brick vernacular in the Lutyens tradition; entrance recessed behind a round-headed brick arch with massive keystone, a shallow oriel above, very simple casement windows flush with the wall, clustered brick stacks. The punning cast-iron frieze of a hunting scene between the windows is by G. P. Bankart.

Milman Street

St.George's Home. TB Hospital Transferred from Metropolitan Asylums Board to London County Council

Mulberry Walk

Development in a low-key 'artistic' manner with small houses in an Arts and Crafts or neo- Georgian idiom by a variety of architects. The street frontages are deliberately varied in their materials, with plentiful use of the projecting bays and wooden door cases that required special exemption from the London Building Acts

2-4. as 14-16

3 1912 was the home of Leonard Stokes,

5 1913 home of the Danish designer Arild Rosencrantz, an odd, mannered stripped classical design in brick, with a pair of stone door cases

14-16 tone set by the sequence of 1913 by Alfred Cox and F. E. Williams where the dominant motifs are again grey and red brick, tiled dormers, and canted bays with sash- windows

Netherton Grove,

Bennett

Park Walk

Was Lovers Walk. Goat in Boots

An earlier c19 group remains

St Andrew with St John a replacement of an older chapel

School

9 Stanley Studios. Features in films 'Personal Services’.

Salvadors. Features in films 'Personal Services’.

Paulton's Square

Quieter, stuccoed after 1836.

Paulton’s Street

In contrast to the intimacy of the old village, regular stucco-trimmed terraces three balanced groups with raised centres, the westernmost of the polite suburban squares off King's Road

Plans of the 1850s Stanley Terrace 1840. Never finished - this was part of a Georgian tradition.

Rewell Street

1

2

Sanford Manor House in works 17th Walnut Trees, stairs and gates. Nell 1762 gunpowder manufacture and manufacture of saltpetre. Then 1780 pottery crucibles by Ruell. Then a cloth manufactory

Riverside Walk

Resumed at Chelsea

Russell Street

Sand End

Gate on the King's Road to keep it for the King in the eighteenth century

Back end of the Parish of Fulham. Tiny village in Tudor times

Sandford Bridge

Called sometimes Little Chelsea Bridge. Built 1762 by the Kensington turnpike trust. Called Bull Bridge after the pub

Slaidburn Street

South Bank:

New housing developments. Varied. Landmark of St Mary's church and view marred by blocks of flats behind. Old Swan Pub and draw dock

Tadema Road

39 workshops 1985 by Moxley & Frank introduce a spare post-modemnote; orange brick, with deep eaves on thin brackets.

Gates of Watney's Brewery, original gates of Cremorne Gardens

Uverdale Road

Features in films 'I Believe in You’.

54 Carlisle House. Features in films 'The Optimists’.

The Vale

Part of the Sloane Stanley estate, remained a secluded spot until the end of the c19, with a few detached houses, popular with artists. Its redevelopment began c. 1909, when it was extended to Elm Park Gardens,

1 de Morgan

2-8 a neo-Georgian block of flats with canted bays by Elms and Jupp.

2 Whistler

4-8

West side is mostly in grey and red brick and dates from c. 1913;

9-11 dated 1912

27 is the most out-of-the-ordinary, with a Venetian window in a jettied timber-framed wing projecting to the street

London Apprentice

Rectory Garden

Russian Peasant's House

Vicarage Crescent BATTERSEA

Odells barge builders

Recreation ground. Managed by Vestry of Battersea

44

42 former vicarage memories of one of the greatest modern 'saints', Edward Adrian Wilson, friend and companion of Captain Scott. but Wilson here from where he ran the Caius College Mission and worked at the Boys' Club run by the Mission. On the wall of the old Vicarage is a plaque in memory of Edward Wilson, put up then by the then London County Council.

new Vicarage next door was built in 1973. It is not a building of particular architectural merit.

Deralie House nineteenth century gate Royal Academy of Dancing

St.John's Estate 1931-4

Old Battersea House, originally the dower house to the manor and built by Sir Walter St John as a wedding present for his wife Joanna. This imposing house, built in the early years of the 18th century, can be visited by appointment. It has been lovingly restored by the Forbes family of America, for it was in a sad state of disrepair when the last owner, Mrs Stirling, died.

Wharfedale Road

Worlds End:

Mentioned by Congreve. A bit dubious. Sign of broken globe and fire and smoke. Charles II tea gardens, bowls. By side of Hob Lane old engravings. Different from now.

Development. Major landmark from the river. 742 homes and 8 acres open space, shops, schools etc. tried to get it human in appearance.  1977 destroyed an old part of Chelsea which had been called World's End. .