Cheyne Walk & Embankment

King's Road | Fulham Road | Cheyne Walk & Embankment

Including Chelsea’s “A Town of Palaces”
Daniel Defoe, “A Tour Through England & Wales”
1724-1726

Start at Sloane Square and go down Lower Sloane Street to the cross roads.
There are two diversions, firstly straight on down Chelsea Bridge Road passed, on the left;

Chelsea Barracks
They were built in 1960-66 to the “design” of Tripe & Wakeham, and were sold for redevelopment in 2005. The previous barracks were built in 1861 to designs by George Moore.

And at the end

Chelsea Bridge
The first bridge, a suspension bridge, was built in 1858 by Thomas Page. The second Bridge was built in 1934 by Rendel, Palmer & Tritton, and opened in 1937 by the Prime Minister of Canada. The original excavations of the site revealed Roman and British weapons, giving support to the rumour that Julius Cesar Crosses at a ford here. More recently people have claimed to have forded the river here at low tide. The museum of London has a miniature chalk head found on the foreshore by Chelsea Bridge.

The second small diversion is left at the cross roads into Pimlico Road to;

Chelsea Bun House
“Pray are not the fine buns sold here in our town, was it not R-r-r-r-rare Chelsea Buns. I bought one on my Walk”
Dean Swift in Journal to Stella, 1712
The famous “Chelsea Bun” was sold from a shop in what is now Bloomfield Terrace. It was run for three generations by the Hand Family and much visited by George II. It was demolished in 1840. Chelsea Bun House, Strombolo House, Jews Row, now Pimlico Road, the old one was demolished in 1839 to be replaced by the New Bun House that lasted until the early 20 th. century.
Please see poem which refers to Chelsea Buns at the end of this section,

Returning the main route is right along Royal Hospital Road to, on the left, the magnificent;
The Royal Hospital.

“Pleasantly seated on a plane of gravel overlooking the meadows and the River Thames”. Wren

The Royal Hospital was built between 1682 and 1689 by Sir Christopher Wren, with the assistance of his pupil Hawksmore. It was built in response to the Sun King Louise XVI’s Les Invalides in Paris, rather than Nell Gwyn’s special pleading.
The bronze of Charles II by Grinling Gibbons was erected in 1676, on Oak Apple Day, May 29, it is decorated with oak leaves to commemorate his escape in an oak tree during the Civil War. In side there is a Van Dyke picture of Charles I and a one by Lely of Charles II. The Duke of Wellington lay in state here in 1852.

Previously the site was occupied by a Theological College for the study of polemic divinity, built by James I in 1611. It was called “Controversy College” by Laud. In 1651 it became a prison for Scottish Covenanters and Dutch prisoners of War following the passing of the Navigation Acts in 1651. Evelyn in his diary of 8 February 1665 noted “I visited our prisoners at Chelsey College, and to examine how the Martial & Suttlers behaved themselves; These were Prisoners taken in the Warr;
They only complain’d that their bread was too fine; I din’d at Sir Hen; Herberts Master of the Revells”. It was demolished in 1682.

The Hospital was bombed three times; 16 February 1918, 16 April 1941 and 3 January 1945.

Sir Robert Walpole had a house, Yarborough House nearby from 1714 to his death in 1745, after which it became an infirmary for the hospital. This was remodelled by Sir John Soane in 1810. The plans, submitted in 1809, also show a Drying Ground next to the carriage way and an Airing Ground south of the stables. Soane followed this with the stables in 1814-17, which survive, the Physicians House in 1819, the Surgeons House in 1821 and West Guard House, previously the smoke house in 1822. The infirmary was destroyed by bombs in 1941 and The National Army Museum was built on the site

The Famous picture by Wilkie of news of the victory at Waterloo with the Royal Hospital in the background was painted outside the Royal Hospital Tavern on Jews Row, demolished in 1896. [Chelsea Scraps 1-270, 1897]
Burton Court was landscaped by the famous nurserymen London & Wise with gravel, grass and lime trees. The Royal Hospital Road was cut across it in 1845.

“A rascal of a Frenchman shot my nose off”. Cartoon of fresh arrivals at Chelsea by Giles Grinagain in 1802, referring to close engagements under the command of the Marquis of Granby.

On the east side of the hospital, now gardens and a park, is the site of;

Ranelagh Gardens
These pleasure gardens were opened on 5 April 1742 by Sir William Robinson and John Lacy, patentee of Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and finally closed in 1805, lasting all of 65 years. The central attraction was the Rotunda, a wood structure, 185 feet in diameter, similar size to the Reading Room of the British Museum, designed by William Jones, with strong references to the Pantheon in Rome. An “all weather facility” in today’s jargon. It had a purpose built canal with gondolas and a working model of Mount Etna. The gardens suffered actual earth tremors in 1750, adversely influencing trade.

In 1744 Horace Walpole was going “every night constantly to Ranelagh which has totally beat Vauxhall” On the 29 of June 1764 Mozart played there, he was living with his family at Ebury Street at the time, and here he composed K16 and K19. In June 1749 it featured a scandalous show with Elizabeth Chudleigh playing Iphigenia, daughter of Agammemnon. It closed in 1826 and the land returned to the Royal Hospital. Beau Brummel, the inventor of the 3 piece suite, was a frequent visitor in the 1790’s. It was painted by Canaletto. In 1770 the admission price was 3/6 including tea and coffee and there was an armed guard to escort visitors back to Mayfair. There were 4,622 admissions to the firework display on 7 June 1790.The pavilion in the gardens was designed by Sir John Soane in 1824. The gardens were laid out in 1860 by John Gibson.

See; Inns & Taverns of Old London Part IV, Pleasure Gardens by Henry C. Shelley. Site; Researching Historic Buildings in the British Isles.

Incidently Hyde Park was used for hunting deer until 1768.

and

Ranelagh House
Built, in 1690, by Richard Jones, Earl of Ranelagh, who was a favourite of Charles II. It was, according to Defoe; “a little palace, I had almost called it paradise”. It was built with money embezzled from the Royal Hospital contract. He was dismissed in 1702 for gross fraud to the sum of £72,000.

Continue west along Royal Hospital Road past the site of;

Gough House
Built in 1707 between the Royal Hospital and Physic garden for John Vaughan, Earl of Carberry, who made his fortune from slavery and was, according to Pepys; “ one of the lewdest fellows of the age”. It became a school in 1816, a hospital in 1866, a new wing was added in 1870 when Tite Street was built in its gardens. It is now apartments.
Walpole House, nearby, was built in 1690 and improved for Sir Robert Walpole by Sir John Vanbrugh.

To, on the left;

Tite Street
“Along side the artistic squalor we have the curious contrast of artistic splendour in a blazing brand new quarter, of which the sacred centre is Tite Street”.
Benjamin Ellis Martin in “Old Chelsea” 1899

Was named after Sir William Tite, chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works who laid out the street during the construction of the Embankment. Previously it was the site of Gough House, see above.
On the left going down are of note;

No 29 Site of Canwell house by Godwin in 1879, now St. Wilfrid’s old peoples home
Nos 33&31, The Studios, by R.W. Edis in 1878-80. Whistler lived there in 1881 and John Sergant, “I hate doing Paughtraits”, bought it in 1885, he
acquired nos. 31 in 1901. It is currently owned by the artist Julian Barrow.

No 35 Site of The White House built by E.W. Godwin in 1877 for Whistler who had to leave it following his bankruptcy and departure to Venice. Sadly it was demolished in 1960’s and replaced by a faux Georgian building.
No 39 An interesting if fortress like modern building adding interesting if unwanted, contrast to the streetscape.

And on the right going down are of note;

No34 Where Oscar Wilde lived

No 44, Keates House, by Godwin in 1878 for Frank Miles, he was a wealthy West Country vicar’s son and a seascape painter. He died in a lunatic asylum in 1891. Oscar Wilde moved in 1881. After his marriage in 1884 he moved to 16 Tite Street until 1895 when the scandal resulted in his incarceration in Reading Jail. On his release he went to France.
No. 46 , The Tower House, by Godwin in 1884.
No.58 Chelsea Lodge, on the corner of Dilke Street, replaces a building by Godwin in 1878 for the Hon. Archibald Stuart Wortley. It was purchased by The Hon. Slingsby Bethell and then, in 1899, by Edwin Abbey RA.
At More House, Tite Street, lived Felix Lancaster “The Squire of Chelsea” [d.1990] whose sister Marie- Jaqueline wrote the biography of Brian Howard, the high camp poet who “ended up in the works of others”.

The road now changes its name to Cheyne Place, formerly;

Paradise Row
The houses were built in the 16 th. and 17 th. century but were all demolished by 1906. Reginald Blunt, the founder of The Chelsea Society, was so annoyed he wrote a book about Paradise Row. It was titles “Paradise Row or a Broken Piece of Chelsea” and published by Macmillan & Co. in 1906.
Hortense Mancini, The Duchesse of Mazarine, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, and mistress of Charles II, retired there with Sr. de St. Egremont. John Evelyn noted “It was a story all the world knew”.
Ormond House was built in 1664, by the first Duke of Ormond on the corner of what is now Royal Hospital Road and Smith Street. In 1777 it became a maritime school.

Further, on the left is;

Swan Walk
Eighteenth century buildings. Mary Astell a proto feminist who lived in Swan Walk in 1694 when she wrote” A serious proposal to ladies for their advancement of their true and greatest interest”.
The walk used to lead down to The Swan, a famous riverside pub frequented by Samuel Pepys.

From which access can be gained to;

Chelsea Physic Garden
“The Physick garden wherein grows
The Love- feast tea for all the house”
Poem by Moravian Brethren

Created on 26 July in 1673 on land owned by Charles Cheyne, initially as a barge house for the Worshipfull Company of Apothecaries, the gardens were rather an after thought. The land was given freehold to the Company in 1722 by Sir Hans Sloane at a nominal rent of £5 per annum. The first four cedars were planted there in 1683, presented by Sir Joseph Banks and bought over from Leiden by John Watts. Two were cut down in 1771. one died in 1874 and the last survived until 1904.
An article in The Sketch of 8 Sept. 1897 noted that “While tea was still a new thing in England specimens of the strange plant where shown in the Chelsea Physick garden and Horace Walpole, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann in 1743 says; “ For the tea trees, now I am in town myself, if possible you shall have some seeds”. And Evelyn in his
diary refers to “many rare annuals, the tree bearing Jesuits bark has done much wonders in quartan agues”.
Carl Von Linne, Linnaeus, visited it in 1736. It has the oldest rock garden in the country. It was converted into a trust in the 1980’s after the threat of development. Dr. Nathaniel Ward invented the Wardian Case in 1829, enabling the rubber plant to be transported from South America to Malaya.
The plant artist G.D.Ehret [1708-1770] and a friend of Sir Hans Sloane, was the husband of Philip Miller’s sister in law. Miller [1722-1770] was head gardener at the Physic garden during its formative period. He was succeeded by William Forsyth, of forsythia fame.

The road now reaches the River Thames and the Embankment, a diversion east along the embankment;

Chelsea Embankment
The Embankment on the north bank of the Thames was built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, following the “Great Stink” of 1858, or as Disraeli said; “A stygian pool reeking with ineffable and unbearable horror”. The Victoria and Albert sections were completed and opened in 1870, with Chelsea Embankment opening in 1874.

“The embankment offers one of the most interesting arrays in inner London of grand urban houses in the Queen Ann style; tall individualistic designs in red brick, some of the first to challenge the supremacy of the earlier uniform stucco terraces of Belgravia and Kensington” Pevsner

No. 18 Cheyne House by Norman Shaw in 1875-7, converted into flats in 1989.
No 17 Swan House was designed by Norman Shaw [1827-1912] in 1876, a fine example of Queen Ann Revival with “Old English” device of a jettied first floor and three oriels. “The whole design is amazingly original and graceful”. Pevsner. Shaw did the Albert Hall Mansions in 1879 and Bedford Park, London’s first garden suburb.
No 16 by A.Croft
No 15 Delahay House by Shaw
No 13 Garden Corner of 1878-80 by I’Anson and refurbished inside in 1906 by C.F.A. Voysey, one of his best.
No 12 by Hungerford Pollen in 1877
Nos. 9-11 By Shaw
No 8 Clock House by Shaw
No 7 By Phene Spears in 1878/9 for Sir Robert Collier, Baron Monkswell.
Nos. 4-6 Built in 1877 by E.W. Godwin as a speculative development, in the Queen Ann style, for Gillow & Co.
No 3 River House, rear secular work, 1876, by George Frederick Bodley [1827-1907]
No 2 By Warren in 1894
No 1 By Warren in 1913, both in a “Wrenaissance” style.

Returning to the corner of Cheyne Place and Flood Street head west along Cheyne Walk that runs parallel to the Embankment;

Cheyne Walk
Named after the Cheyne family who held the manor from 1657 to 1712,

Number 1 It was rebuilt in 1887 incorporating items from other houses demolished in the area.
Number 2; Built 1717 as part of Sir Hans Sloane’s ribbon development. It was refronted in 1879, John Barrymore lived there 1924 to 25
Number 3; Built 1717, Admiral Henry Smith, founder of the Royal Geographic Society Lived there from 1788 to 1865. Kieth Richards and Anita Pallenberg bought it in 1969 for £50,000.
Number 4 Built 1718, George Eliot briefly lived there before her death 19 days later, as did the painters Dyce and Maclise.
Number 5 Built 1718, A wealthy miserly eccentric lived there and gave £500,000 to Queen Victoria on his death, Her Uncle Leopold noted;”good news because one never knew what might happen to Royalty which was already much diminished on the Continent”. The iron gate and railings may have come from Lindsey House.
Number 6 Built in 1718, Joseph Danvers Lived there, as did Dr. Dominiceti who operated Dr. Dominiceti’s Baths in Cheyne Walk in 1760’s. Admiral W.H. Smythe FRS lived there in the 1840’s and 50’s.
Nos 7-12 Queen Ann style 1880’s interlopers
Number 10 David Lloyd George lived there 1924 to 1925
Number14 Bertrand Russell lived there from 1902 to 1904 whilst writing The Principles of Mathematics. At the time he noted; ”This place is singularly beautiful” In 1921 after his second marriage to Dora at Chelsea Registary Office he lived in nos. 31 Sidney Street. The building itself is a 20 th. century neo-Georgian rebuild.
Number 15 The Chelsea painter Cecil G. Lawson lived there in 1869. has father was William Lawson and his brother Francis Lawson.
Number16 Numbers 16-34 were built in 1708 by Thomas Huton [ Pevsner claims no.16 built in 1717 by John Witt] on land leased from Lord Cheyne, they backed onto the gardens of Shrewsbury House. Now called Tudor House, was built sometime before 1692 allegedly for the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II, whom he married in 1662. The gateway to the house still has her initials on it, and formerly was surmounted by a crown and sceptre. In fact the RC stands for an apothecary called Richard Chapman, the first owner. It was called Queens House in 1892. A painting of her by Lely hangs in the Council Chamber of The Royal Hospital. The District of Queens in New York is named in honour of her after the British seized control of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1664. It was recently reported that the black president of Queens had removed her picture from the wall of the town hall, claiming her family had profited from slavery, and had managed to defeat plans for a statue of her near the UN building.
It is thought that the house was designed by a pupil of Wren.
In 1862 Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882] moved in, with George Meredith, the novelist, and Swinburn. His wife Elizabeth Siddal died of an overdose of laudanum. Rosetti painted her as Bearrice, Dante’s lover. There is a monument to Rossetti in the Embankment Gardens with a fountain by J.P. Seddon and a bust by Maddox-Brown, instigated by Holman Hunt in 1887. He was photographed in the gardens of the house in 1863 by Lewis Carroll, The Rev. C.L. Dodgson. It is claimed that Rosetti’s pet wombat was the original dormouse in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
It is said that Catherine Parr haunted this house “quite a nuisance on the stairs”. The house being built on the site of the second manor House [ Chelsea scraps 1-270 1897]
Rossetti on the Thames; “ Wan Water, wandering water wettering”.
Number 18 Don Saltero’s coffee house was where 18 Cheney Walk now is. It was opened in 1695 by James Salter, valet to Sir Hans Sloane and named by Vice Admiral Munden. It featured a museum or “knackatory” from objects he obtained from that great collector and co-founder of the British Museum sir Hans Sloane. It was visited by, among others, Dr. Johnson,the poet Joseph Addison, the essayist Richard Steele who mentions its “punch” [Tatler, 28/6/1700] and Benjamin Franklin who mentions coming to Chelsea “to see the college and Don Saltero’s curiosities”.
Joseph Addison had a country house just over Chelsea creek on the Fulham side and Jonathan Swift in his “Journal to Stella noted that in 1710; “We dined at a country house near Chelsea where Mr, Addison often retires”. Addison later married Lady Warwick of Holland House in 1716. Dr Johnson noted “a match that resembles the marriage in which the sultan gives his daughter a man to be her slave”.

[For poem first published on June 22 in 1723
Please see notes at end].

Nos 19-26 Built 1759-65, Wyndhan Lewis lived at nos 21 from 1935 to 1936, and
Bram Stoker lived here when he wrote Dracula in 1896, his next novel “ Miss Betty” was set in 18 th. century Cheyne Walk.
Between23 and 24 there is Cheyne Mews with a sign on the wall regarding King Henry VIII’s Manor House.
Nos. 27-30 A pleasing semicircular parade which used to balance the Pier Hotel opposite.

Oakley Street
Laid out in 1860 through the grounds of the Manor House, demolished in 1758, and adjacent Winchester House which was demolished in 1828. The Pier Hotel, facing Cadogan Steam Boat Pier, owned by Goldings was demolished in the 1960’s.
The statue “Boy on a Dolphin” is by David Wynne. His other work includes Dancer with Bird, 1975, in Cadogan Square and Dancers, 1971, in Cadogan Place.

The Manor House
The other major house in the area, The Manor House, in what is now Chelsea Manor Street, was acquired in 1536 by Henry VIII from either William Baron Sandys of The Vyne or Sir Reginald Bray in exchange for an estate at Mottisfont near Romsey, dated July 14, anno 28 Henry VIII. The estate had recently been sequestrated from the Church and is still refered to as Mottisfont Abbey. The Manor of Chelcheya was originally given, according to George Bryan’s book on Chelsea published in 1869, to the Abbott of Westminster by Edward The Confessor. It is recorded thus in the Domesday Book of 1086.
He built a new house initially for Elizabeth, daughter of Henry’s second wife Ann Bolyn who was executed that year. Elizabeth, the future queen, was 4 years old when she moved in. The Wriothesleys Chronicle reported that; “The 20 th. day of Maie, 1536, the King was marred secretlie in Chelsey in Middlesex to one Jane Seymour”. The marriage lasted all of one year before she died. Her son , the future ill fated Edward VI also lived at the manor house when young. Jane Seymour had two brothers; Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, governing as regent for the young King Edward VI, his sisters son. Her other brother was Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral
In the year 1538 the same Chronicle reported that; “The image of Our Lady of Wallsingham with all the jewells that honge about them.... and they were burnt at Chelsey by my Lord Privy seal, Cromwell, because people should use noe more idolatry into them. “
Katherine Parr, Henry’s sixth and last wife lived there after his death in 1547. She wrote in that year; “By what means the time is so well abbreviated I know not, except weeks be shorter in Chelsey, than in other places.” She moved out following her riotous affair and adventurous marriage in 1548. A letter written by “Kateryn the Quene” to Seymour went thus; “When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither, ye must take some pain to come early in the morning, that ye may be gone again by seven o’clock and so I suppose ye may come without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge over night at what hour ye will come, that my porteress may wait at the gate to the fields for you”. Thomas Seymour was executed for high treason in 1549, the death warrant was signed by his brother Edward, Duke of Somerset. It was found that he had ambitions to marry Elizabeth and his plot was discovered. It was said of him that;” there died a man with much wit and very little judgement”.

Finally Anne of Cleves, unkindly referred to as the “Mare of Flanders”, and Henry’s fourth wife of just six months duration, lived there until her death in 1557.

On her ascension to the throne in 1558 Elizabeth I used it to house Ann Seymour the Duchess of Somerset and widow of the Edward Seymour Lord Protector until her death in 1587. The next tenant in 1610 was Lord Howard of Effingham later Earl of Nottingham, who had, in 1588, defeated the Spanish Armada. On January 10 in 1600 ; “ Her Majesty dined at Chelsea at my Lord of Nottingham”, from the Sidney papers. During the reign of Charles I it was owned by the Duke of Hamilton until his death at the Battle of Worcester in the Civil War.
The pleasant red brick Manor house, illustrated in Hamilton’s map, was then bought by Charles Cheyne and Lady Jane Cavendish in 1655, he was created Lord Cheyne by Charles II in 1681. The house was sold by their son William Lord Cheyne to Sir Hans Sloane in 1712. Sir Hans Sloane was physician to Queen Anne, George I and George II and is credited, while on a visit to Jamaica in 1687, with the invention of milk chocolate. He followed Sir Isaac Newton as President of The Royal Society and gave land for the Physic Garden operated by The Apothecaries Company. He was referred to as the father of Natural History and his collection formed part of the initial collection of the British Museum.
In 1717 Sloane’s second daughter Elizabeth married Charles Cadogan, 2 nd. Baron, who inherited three quarters of Sloane’s estate on his death, some 270 acres. It has remained in the same family ever since as the Cadogan Estates which owns some 94 acres of Chelsea with 4,000 flats and 700 houses.
Sloane’s elder daughter Sarah married George Stanley of Paultons who inherented the balance of the estate, the Sloane Stanley estate.

The Manor House itself was demolished in 1755 two years after Sloane’s death. A sign in Cheyne Mews states that 19-26 Cheyne Walk were built on the site of the Manor House in 1759-65, and a sign on Cheyne Studios in Cheyne Gardens points to a boundary wall of the Manor.

Winchester House
Winchester House was built in the mid 17 th. Century by James Duke of Hamilton It then became the palace for the Bishops of Winchester untill the end of the 18 th. century.
The house was demolished and replaced by the Pier Hotel, 12 houses in Oakley Street, 5 shops including Margies Smithy and Thurstons Billiard Factory and the famous Blue Cockatoo Restaurent. Its visitors book between the wars reads like a artistic who’s who of the period, Eric Gill signed it in 1927.
The whole site was sold by the Cadogan Estates in 1962 to Wates who built the current Pier House, blocks of flats and a showroom, and the statue of A Boy on a Dolphin.

The houses on Cheyne Row were started in 1708 in the gardens of the big house, it was one of the earliest terrace developments, St Leonards terrace followed in 1765, then Smith Street in 1794-1807. The essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle, the sage of Chelsea, lived in Cheyne Row from 1832 till his death fifty years later. A statue of him by Sir Edgar Boehm can be found in the Embankment Gardens. Incidently Boehm’s studio was in Sidney Mews, off the Fulham Road, where he died following a visit from Princess Louise, eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. It is alleged that they had been long term lovers.

Cadogan Pier
Was built in 1841 to handle the Steamboat traffic, which departed every 15 minutes for the one hour journey to London Bridge.

Albert Bridge
Designed by Roland Mason Ordish in 1873 , who also did the roof of St. Pancras Station and a bridge in Prague. It was strengthened and modernised by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in 1884, during the construction of the Embankment. It was strengthened again in 1973 following a campaign to save it lead by John Betjeman. Most of the bridges were bought out of private ownership in the 1870’s by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Albert Bridge was freed in 1879.
Thomas Blood, the Irish Jewel thief, lay in wait in the reeds by where the bridge now is in order to shoot King Charles II as he swam by.
Scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s film “A Clock Work Orange” were shot in the pedestrian underpass under Albert Bridge where Alex, the Droog, is beaten up by tramps in revenge.

Continuing along;

Cheyne Walk
Number 37 Site of Magpie and Stump pub where Colonel Despard’s plot to kill King George III and rob the Tower of London was hatched. The house on the site was designed by Ashbee and “deplorably” demolished in 1968 for a block of “lumpish” flats, according to Pevsner.
Nos. 38-39 Houses built in 1898/99 by Charles Robert Ashbee [1863-1942] a friend of Frank Lloyd Wright. Number 39 “ built as a studio house for Miss Clara Christian,[ a still life painter] is of red brick with narrow evenly spaced Queen Ann windows, the rhythm quickening on the rough cast second floor. No. 38, in masterly contrast the windows are spaced more widely, above a bold arched basement entrance, and are crowned by a memorably austere roughcast gable”. Pevsner
Number 42 Lutyens built a house called London House which was reviewed in Country Life in 14/1/1933, the client was Guy Liddell and his eccentric wife the Hon. Calypso Baring, she had the walls papered with copies of The Times. Guy Liddell was MI5’s director of counter espionage during the war and deputy director general of MI5 from 1947 to 1952. He has been accused of being “the most successful mole of all” by John Costello’s “Mask of Treachery [1988] and Richard Deacon “The greatest Treason; The bazaar story of Hollis, Liddell and Mountbatten” [1989] [see; The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol. I 1939-42, edited by Nigel West]. It has since been replaced by a block of flats, as have nos. 43 to 45.

Shrewsbury House
Shrewsbury House was built in 1519 by George Earl of Shrewsbury, a friend of King Henry VIII and a privy councillor. He was the grandfather of the Sixth Earl who married the famous Bess of Hardwick. She built Chatsworth House which is still in the hands of her descendant the Duke of Devonshire. The house, at one time a girls school and wallpaper factory, was demolished in 1810. In 1933 Sir Edwin Lutyens built a house on the site, 42 Cheyne Walk, for G.M. Liddell. It was in turn demolished and replaced by a block of flats.

Cheyne Walk
Nos 46-48 1711. Site of Three Tuns pub. Mick Jagger was living at nos. 48 Cheyne Walk in May 1969 with Marianne Faithfull when he was busted by the police for drugs, he was found guilty but has always claimed he was framed by the police, Det. Sgt. Robin Constable. The monument to Carlyle in the gardens is by Boehm.
Nos 49 Site of Feathers pub

A diversion north up;

Cheyne Row
Great Cheyne Row, numbers 16-34 were developed in1708 by Elbrow Glentworthy, one of the first terraces in Chelsea, on the gardens of the Feathers pub, and named after the Lord of the Manor, Viscount Cheyne.
Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881], The Sage of Chelsea, lived at 24 Cheyne Row [was nos. 5] for 50 years from 1834. He was visited by John Stewart Mill, Tennyson and Ruskin and Leigh Hunt who lived at 10 Upper Cheyne Row, and sent him “kind unpractical messages”. Carlyle described his house thus; “It is a remnant of genuine old dutch looking Chelsea, looking out mainly on trees. We might see at half a mile distance Bolingbrokes Battersea”. Charles Marriott in the Evening Standard 12 Sept 1910. [ Chelsea scraps]
A statue to him by Sir Edgar Boehm was set up in 1882 in Embankment Gardens. The Evening Standard reported, in 1908, that Rodin had made a sculpture of Whistler to be placed next to Carlyle. It was of a muse holding a medallion featuring a bust relief of Whistler. [ Chelsea Scraps 5, 778]
Boehm was also responsible for the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner and Lord Napier of Magdala in Queens Gate.
Thomas Carlyle frequented the old Six Bells pub on the Kings Road. His wife did not allow smoking in the house, except on the roof.

Lawrence House
Lawrence House, also known as Monmouth House, was at the top of what is now Laurence Street. The famous Chelsea Pottery with its anchor sign operated nearby from 1736 to 1784. The house was built in the 1590’s. In 1714 it was rebuilt by the Duchess of Monmouth, widow of Charles II illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth. He had led the notorious Monmouth rebellion in 1685 against James II, younger brother of Charles II, for which he was executed. Her secretary John Grey wrote “The Beggar’s Opera”.
The house was demolished in 1835. The novelist Tobias Smollett lived there from 1753, the climate was regarded as beneficial for his sick daughter. A review of Tobias Smollett by Jeremy Lewis noted that; “Smollett tried to cocoon himself within a circle of fellow hacks whom he entertained in his Chelsea house”.
The porch remained, opposite Justice Walk until 1892 at least. Incidentally Alfred Beaver in his book of that year described Justice Walk as; “This squalid passage was once a pleasant thoroughfare, planted with an avenue of lime trees”.

Chelsea Pottery
The site of the pottery was at the top of Lawrence Street. Chelsea Porcelain, founded by a Flemish Huguenot goldsmith, Nicholas Sprimont, in 1745, financed by Sir Everard Falkner in his garden of Monmouth House, now the north end of Lawrence Street. By the 1760’s it was rivalling Sevre but by the end of the decade it was purchased by William Duesbury and became “Chelsea-Derby” ware. It was demolished in 1784.
Its mark was a red anchor and it specialised in figurines, birds, and “objets de vertu”or “toys/equisite trifles” such as snuff boxes, scent bottles and pill cases. It was situated in Lawrence Street at the corner with Justice Walk. It was described by a French visitor as “La veritable porcelaine de Shellsea”.[ Chelsea Scraps 1-270, 1897] { Elizabeth Adams, “Chelsea Porcelain”, BM Press} See Red Anchor Close. A break away factory made the famous “girl on a swing”.
A service of Chelsea Porcelain was given by The King to the Duke of Meckleburg at a cost of £1,200. King George III had a coffee pot of Chelsea China on board the Royal Yacht.
Further down Lawrence was the Cross Keys Pub, now a restaurant. An old print shows it overlooking the river. In January 1920 the landlady, Mrs. Frances Buxton, who was rather eccentric was found murdered. The motive was believed to be robbery. [The Times, 19.1.1920]

A further diversion into;

Upper Cheyne Row
Was known as Little Cheyne Row, the houses were built I 1710-15 in the gardens of the old. Winchester House.
Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859, lived at no. 22. The son of an American lawyer who had to leave in 1775 as he had supported the union. Leigh published both Byron and Shelley in 1822 and moved to Chelsea in 1833.
Greville Wynne, the English spy held by the Russians lived in 19 Upper Cheyne Row, he was a regular at the Cross Keys pub. He was approached by GRU officer Oleg Penkovsky in Moscow in 1961 and handled him until his arrest in Budapest in 1962. Imprisoned he was released, a wrecked man, in 1964. From “A spies London” by Roy Berkeley”. See Nigel West’s “ Seven Spies Who Changed the World”.
The potter William de Morgan lived at number 30 in 1872, he then moved to The Vale and finally to 127 Old Church Street.
The Church was built in 1905 to the designs of Edward Goldie, and it contains the Vertebrae of Sir Thomas More, originally from Brugges.

Returning to;

Cheyne Walk
Number 50 Was the site of a pub; The Kings Head and Eight Bells, now converted into a Brasserie. The original pub burnt down in the 1880’s

Carlyle Mansions
Built on the site of the Three Cricketers Pub and Thames Coffee House in 1886. Henry James living there in 1913 whilst becoming a British Citizen, he had stayed with Rosetti in 1869. T.S. Eliot lived there 1915-1950, where he taught the young John Betjemin. Ian Fleming wrote his first Bond book “Casino Royale” in Carlyle Mansions in 1952, the year he married Ann, the recently divorced Lady Rothermere. [ see John Pearson’s The Life of Ian Fleming]. Erskin Childers and Somerset Maugham also lived there.
“This Chelsea perch, this haven of sage and seagull, proved, even after a brief experiment, just the thing for me” Henry James.

Number 59 William Holman Hunt lived there from 1850 to 1853, it is now the Cheyne Hospital for Children, Built in 1888 by Beazley & Burrows in an “overblown Queen Ann style” Pevsner. It is now converted into flats.
Holman Hunt painted “The Light of the World” on the first floor of the fifth house in the row east of Chelsea Old Church. According to a letter in the Daily Mail in 1910 he had “a humble first floor room over a small shop run by a Mrs Bradshaw to whom the painter was most kind”. He coined the term Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The painter Whistler lived between 1863 & 1878 at, first, 101 Cheyne Walk and then at 96 Cheyne Walk where he painted the famous picture of his mother “Arrangements in Grey and Black”, and now in the Louvre. He then moved to Tite Street but in 1893 moved back to Cheyne Walk, this time nos 74, into a house designed by C.R. Ashbee, on the site of the Magpie and Stump that had burnt down in 1886. He died there in 1903. The famous libel case where he sued Ruskin for his criticism “ Flinging a pot of paint in the publics face” refers to his painting of fireworks at Cremourn Gardens titled “Nocturn in Black and Gold, falling rockets”.[ see details at end of section]

Cheyne Walk
Nos 62-63 Built in 1686 by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Nicholas Sprimont of the Chelsea Pottery lived at nos, 63 in 1755-56. near the Old Church, was bombed and restored, as was the church.
No 64 Petyt Hall, part of the church.

Chelsea Old Church
Chelsea Old Church, founded in 1316 in reign of Edward I, rebuilt in 1667, bombed in 1942 and rebuilt. Tomb, 1669, of Lady Jane Cheyne, daughter of Duke of Newcastle and wife of Charles Cheyne Viscount Newhaven. Chained books given by Sir Hans Sloane in 1712, including the “vinegar bible”, so called because in one verse vineyard is spelt vinegar. Full details of this most interesting church can be found in the guide book available in the church.

The seated statue of Sir Thomas More is by L. Cubitt Bevis in 1969

Cross Old Church Street and continue into;

Lombard Terrace/ Roper Gardens
“The most beautiful spot in Old Chelsea” Sir William Orpen, letter to the Times 1927.
The Lombard Café & Restaurant was on the corner of Old Church Street, demolished in the 1930’s, other lost buildings included;
No.68 The Rising Sun Pub, conveniently opposite the church
No. 72
Originally built by Ashbee in 1896/98 as studio houses. The sculptor Jacob Epstien lived at nos. 72, it was bombed in 1941 and his sculpture marks the site. Eighteen of his carvings on the façade of the BMA building on the Strand were defaced in the1930’s when it was used by the Southern Rhodesia Government.
Number 74 Designed by Ashbee for himself and his bride. It is where Whistler died, and finally destroyed in the war.
Number 75 Again by Ashbee in 1901 for Mrs William Hunt, an art collector.

New houses were built which were subsequently bombed by a parachute mine on 17 April 1941. The houses were replaced in 1961. The gardens were built in 1965 to the designs of Peter Shepheard. The building of the embankment entailed the loss of Lombard and Duke Streets, between Old Church Street and Beaufort Street, and included The Adam & Eve Pub, Alldins Coal Wharf and Arch House.
Originally the area was the site of a large house built in 1580’s for the Bishop of London. In 1879 it was sub-divided as Lombard terrace with an arch punched through to make way for Lombard Street. It was demolished in 1930.
The name Roper is after William and Mary Roper who were gifted the land as a marriage gift by Thomas More in 1521.

Danvers House
The site of Danvers House was behind Roper Gardens. It was built in 1622 by Sir John Danvers who signed Charles I death warrant in 1649. It was an early example of the Italian renaissance style and it is thought that Inigo Jones was involved with it. The poet Dr. John Donne of “no man is an island” fame stayed there, whilst Dean of St. Paul’s, to escape the plague in 1625. He preached the sermon at the funeral of Lady Danvers, who was some 20 years older than Sir John, at Chelsea Old Church in 1627. Isaak Walton, his biographer and author of “The Compleat Angler” was at the funeral. The house was bought by Hon. Thomas Wharton, a leading Whig of the day and owner of Chelsea Park who was renowned in his youth as “the greatest rake in Britain”.
The house was demolished in 1716 and its famous Italianate gardens were converted in the 1830’s to Paulton Square with its late Georgian style terraced houses.

Cross Danvers Street to, in front of you;

Crosby Hall
However the oldest house in Chelsea is in fact an import. Crosby Hall, Danvers Street, was originally built in 1422 at Bishopsgate for a wealthy merchant Sir John Crosby. [ Seventy years before “discovery” of America] On his death it was let to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who became Richard III in 1483. He was killed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. Sir Thomas More owned the building before he moved to Chelsea. Shakespeare has Richard, Duke of Gloucester say, in the play Richard III ; I.2. line 212; “And presently repair to Crosby Hall.” It was moved, stone by stone, to its present site in 1910 to make way for a bank. In the First World War it housed Belgian refugees. The American writer Henry James, who was living in nearby Carlyle Mansions, helped these refugees and subsequently wrote “Refugees in Chelsea” which was printed privately in 1920.
The White Hart pub was on part of the site.
One of Chelsea’s famous old river side pubs, The Adam and Eve, was torn down when they made the Embankment, the road opposite Crosby Hall thunders over its foundations.

Continue along Cheyne Walk, which now forms part of the Embankment, passed an apartment block More Gardens to;

Beaufort Street
Laid out in 1766 on the site of Beaufort House

Beaufort House
The history of the area becomes much clearer when one of the great houses of Chelsea was built in the 1524 by Sir Thomas More. In fact he adapted an existing 15 th. Building. He was the author of “Utopia” in 1510 and Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII; replacing Cardinal Wolsey. In 1520 he attended at the Field of the Cloth of Gold outside Calais when Henry met Francis I of France.
He was executed in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry’s break from Rome, and was cannonised in 1935. The quintessential English actor Kenneth More was a direct descendent.
The epitaph over his tomb in the Church has a word ommitted, it runs; “Furibus qitem et homiadus…………Molestus” which translates ;”Scourge of thieves, murderers and……….” The ommitted word is thought to be “heretics. More bound heretics to a tree in his garden and had them flogged, the tree being refered to as the “Judas Tree”.

Sir Thomas More was the main character in Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons”, played by Paul Scofield. The artist Hans Holbein is said to have stayed three years in this house, his drawing of Sir Thomas More and family is in the National Portrait Gallery. He also designed the renaissance capitals in 1528 for More’s chapel in the church. Erasmus, the Dutch scholar and priest and leading humanist of the renaissance era, was a regular visitor. He wrote of More that; “There is not a man living so affectionate to his children, he loveth his old wife as well as if she was a young maid”.
The house itself was situated south of the Kings Road, where Beaufort Street now runs. And was described by Erasmus as “not mean nor invidiously grand but comfortable”. The area to the north was the park to the house. It was often referred to as Sand Hills and, after being enclosed by a wall in 1625 by the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, became Chelsea Park. The eastern side of the park was bordered by what is now Old Church Street and previously Church Lane, an extension Church Street south of the King’s Road. This street was the original “High Street” of Chelsea. The western side of the estate was bordered by what is now Park Walk, and previously known as Lover’s Walk. See Kip’s view of Beaufort House printed in 1699, with current street pattern superimposed.
The house was forfeited to the King and in 1538 rented to the French Ambassador. It was then aquired by William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester who died in 1572. The house was then aquired, in 1596, by Sir Robert Cecil, son of William Cecil Baron Burghley, later the Earl of Salisbury, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth I. In a much quoted incident Sir Robert, whilst walking with the Queen, sheltered from a shower of rain under an elm tree in the grounds of the estate. She gratefully declared; “Let this henceforth be called the Queen’s Tree.” In parish records of 1667 a tavern called The Queens Tree is mentioned, from which The Queen’s Elm evolved. After only e few years and major alterations he sold it to Henry, Earl of Lincoln, who in turn sold it to Sir Robert Stanley.
By the reign of Charles I it was known as Buckingham House, being owned by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A report in 1626 noted that “yesterday at Chelsey house the Duke feasted the King and Queen”.
It was sequestrated by Cromwell during the Commonwealth or republic when a Mr. Whitelock lived there and was sent by Parliament as ambassador to Sweden. He purchased his pardon after the restoration in 1660; truth and reconciliation old style.
After the restoration of Charles II the house was purchased by the Duke of Beaufort, hence its name. John Evelun in his diary entry of 3 September 1683 noted; “I went [together with my wife etc.] to Chelsey, to see my charge, the daughters and children of my deare friends V. Countesse Mordaunt; After dinner I walked to survey what had ben don as to repairs etc. by the Duke of Beaufort upon his late purchased house at Chelsey, of which I had once the selling of for the Countess of Bristol; I found he had made great alterations, but might have built a better house with the materials & that Cost”.

Chelsea Park appears to have been owned by Lord Wharton who lived at Danvers House from 167? to 1714 and is the reputed author of “Lilliburlero”, the famous anti-Jacobite song which was said to have “sung a King out of three kingdoms”, referring to the precipitous flight of James II in 1688.

In a letter from Ralph Palmer to his nephew Lord Fermanagh, dated Dec. 3, 1705 from Little Chelsea; “My Lord Wharton’s great stable in Church Lane, Chelsey, is converted into a playhouse where we have all been to see great things. a fine scaramouch performed by the Duke of Southampton’s servants”.

In 1737 the house was bought by Sir Hans Sloane for £2,500 and sadly demolished, there being no listing at the time. It was replaced by Beaufort Street which was begun in 1766. The only surviving element is the gate designed by Inigo Jones and now at Chiswick House, evincing “O gate, how cam’st thou here” from the poet Alexander Pope of; “To err is human, to forgive, divine” fame.

On the left is;

Battersea Bridge
The first bridge was built of wood with 16 timber piers in 1771 by Earl Spencer, designed by Henry Holland. It replaced a horse ferry, mentioned in 1292, “a passage of the Thames at Cenlee” and was mentioned by Norden in 1592.
It was the first bridge to have oil lamps in 1799, and electric lamps in 1824. It was closed in 1883 and demolished in 1887. The New cast iron bridge, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, was opened by Lord Roseberry on 31 July 1890.
Battersea is derived from Beaduric’s Eye or Island.

Continuing west;

Cheyne Walk
Nos 91-92 Belle View Lodge and House, built in 1717, Charles Condor lived there in 1904. Pevsner claims that 91-100 “belong to the best Chelsea has to offer”
No. 93 Built in 1777, Elizabeth Gaskell born there 29 September 1810, but moved soon after her mother died.
Nos 96-100
Lindsey House is the last of the Chelsea Palaces. John Wesley on Lindsay House;” The country house in Chelsea is a palace for a prince; truly they are wise in their generation” Press report 25/8/1898 in Chelsea scraps 1-270, 1897]

Lindsey House
The only house remaining from this time is Lindsey House on Cheyne Walk. It was built in 1639 by Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, a Swiss court physician to Henry IV of Navarre and Louise XIII of France and James I and Charles I in England.
According to a report in The Daily Mail in 1896 the house was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674 for The Earl of Lindsey. Originally it was the farm house for More’s house. It appears on Kip’s View of 1699 to the left of Beaufort House.
Count Zinzendorf purchased and renovated the house in 1750 for the Moravian Society but sold it twenty years later. The stables of Beaufort House were converted into the Moravian Chapel, which still exists behind a high wall and the gardens became their burial ground, again which still exists.
James Gillray, the father of the famous caricaturist, was sexton there for 40 years and is buried there. In 1770 it was converted into 5 separate dwellings, and so remains to today as Lindsey Row. Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, both engineers, lived there, as did Joseph Bramah the inventor of the lock. The artists John Martin, who specialised in large apocalyptic paintings, lived there with his eccentric brother William Martin who claimed to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Finally the American painter James Abbott McNiell Whistler lived there from 1866 to 1879, his rooms overlooking Old Battersea Bridge which he frequently painted.

The House was divided in 1775. Whistler lived at no. 96 from 1886 -1879 where he painted “The Artist’s Mother “ which is now in the Louvre. The local artist Walter Greaves painted a picture of his friend Whistler in his Lindsey House Studio in 1871.
It was the home of Paul Channon MP and in July 1972 the British Government held clandestine talks with the IRA, including Gerry Adams, to negotiate a ceasefire but failed. The Brunels, father & son lived at 98, as did the painter John “Mad” Martin who painted the Last Judgement series

Nos; 101,102,103
Number 104 Home of Charles Greaves, his two sons and daughter Alice, known as Tinnie. Whistler took the two Greaves brothers, Henry & Walter, under his wing and gave them painting lessons and allowed Walter to use his studio. It was only discovered in 1974 that some paintings, previously attributed to Whistler, were in fact by Walter Greaves. When Whistler went bankrupt his mistress, Mary Woods, whom he had refused to marry went off with 80 canvases
They in turn rowed him out into the river to sketch. Just as their father, Charles Greaves, had rowed Turner across to St. Mary’s Church so he could paint from the west facing oriel window over the west door, still known as Turner’s window. They also looked after the artist John Martin, waking him up when storms appeared.
Hillair Belloc lived there from 1901 to 1905

Cross Millman Street

George House
Built in 1600 to the south west of Beaufort House. Sold in 1662 to Josias Priest as a girls boarding school where Purcell performed the first performance of Dido & Aeneas. Sir W. Millman bought it in 1697 and replaced it with cottages in 1726 as Millman Row and , in 1952, by council housing.

Continue west along Cheyne Walk

Brunel House By Armstrong & Macmanus in 1950

Nos. 107, 108 John Tweed, scupltor
No. 109 Philip Wilson Steer, the artist [1860-1942], lived there from 1898 to 1942, shy and eccentric he went shopping with a large cat. Sickert, on hearing he had been hit by a car, sent a telegram “Do be careful, I have no desire to be the greatest living painter”. From “London’s Riverside by Suzanne Ebel & Doreen Impey. Cecil King the Newspaper proprieter also lived there
Nos. 110, 111

Cross Riley Street

No.113
No. 114 Was the Kings Arms Pub
Nos115, 116
No.117 Was a pub, The Aquatic
Number 118-119 Turners House, 118/119 Cheyne Walk is where the famous painter lived from 1846 to his death on 19 December 1851. His last 4 paintings for the Royal Academy where painted there. He was known locally as Mr Booth, Admiral or Puggy Booth, he lived with his housekeeper Hannah Danby and survived happily in rum and milk. It is reported that in 1851 an increasingly eccentric Turner visited his old friend David Roberts, and then disappeared, only to be found by his housekeeper living with his Margate landlady Caroline Booth. She lived there from 1846 to 1867. [Chelsea scraps 1-270, 1897] That part of Cheyne Walk was 6/7 Davis Place until 1870, and was then referred to as Queen Ann Street and the house known as The Admirals Lookout.
In 1895 there were plans to make the house a museum of art featuring Turners “relics”, subscriptions were invited but it came to nothing.
The Illustrated London News of 5 Oct. 1895 re Turners house stated that “the vandals are busy, Humboldt’s house disappeared the other day”. [op cit]
Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame, and his brother Peter lived in the house when they were children.

Nos. 120,121,122

.The Chelsea Reach Improvement which extended the embankment over the mud of Chelsea foreshore from Battersea Bridge to Lots Road in 1897 was opposed by among others Alma Tadema, q.v. Tadema Road, Sir Walter Besant, C.R. Ashbee, Reginald Blunt, Sir Edward J. Poynter, and John Phene, to no avail. However houseboats are still moored on the reach.

Cross Blantyre Street and pass the massive 1970’s red brick development, for details please see the Kings Road walk. On the left side of the road just beyond the Chelsea Yacht and Boat Company building are some public gardens;

Cremourne Gardens
Created in 1982. The wrought iron gateway stood on the Kings Road entrance to Lord Cremourne’s and , from 1843 to 1877, the pleasure gardens.
See; Cremorne gardens Entertainments 1831-77, British Museum National Library Folio Volume.

Cremourn House
Cremourne House was built in 1620. In 1796 the local historian Thomas Faulkner wrote; “I was present at a stag hunt in Chelsea. The animal swam across from Battersea, and made for Lord Cremorne’s grounds. he ran along the waterside and turned up Church Lane”. It was owned between 1813 and 1824 by Philadelphia Hannah, Lady Cremorne, who was the great great grand daughter of William Penn, founder of the State of Pennsylvania. In 1830 it was purchased by Charles Randon de Berenger, Baron de Beaufain, as a Sporting Club, the fore-runner of the Hurlingham Club. By 1845 the grounds had been converted into a pleasure garden, Cremorne Gardens, similar in style to Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens. It was closed down in 1877 for disreputability. All that remains are the rather elegant iron gates. The Lots Road power station, reported to be the world’s longest serving power station and soon to be converted into flats, occupies the gardens.

Ashburnam House
Ashburnam House, was built in 1747. In 1786 it was owned by Lady Mary Coke who had an affair with the Duke of York, brother of George III. Walpole unkindly referred to her as “ Mary a la Coque”. The Balloon Tavern was opened in the gardens in 1862.

As a diversion proceed west along Lots Road past the Power Station to the new development of;

Chelsea Harbour
Built in the 1980’s by P&O, the architect was Ray Moxley

To return go north up Lots Road to the Kings Road and buses to Sloane Square, the 11 & 22.

Notes

McNeill Whistler [1834-1903]
Born in America but settled first in Paris, where he became a friend of Count Robert de Montesquiou [ the model for Des essientes in Huysman’s “A Rebours”] He moved to London in 1860, first to Bermondsey and then in 1863 to 7 Lindsey Row near Battersea Bridge. During this period he did a drawing “Battersea-A view from Lindsey House” which is in The Huntarian Museum, Glasgow.
In 1867 he moved to 2 Lindsey Row, now 36 Cheyne Walk. Where he stayed until 1878. Here he painted “Portrait of Painters Mother”,1871, who was staying with him to avoid The American Civil War. The painting was purchased by the Louvre in 1891.
During this period he painted a series of Nocturnes inspired by the Thames, and which in turn influenced Claude Debussy’s music, and Huysman described them as “dream landscapes”. These nocturnes include
Nocturne in Blue & Gold- Old Battersea Bridge, Tate
Nocturne in Blue & Silver , Private Collection USA
Nocturne in Blue & Silver- Cremorne Lights, Tate
Nocturne in Grey & Gold-Chelsea Snow, Fogg Museum Harvard
Nocturne in Black & Gold- Falling Rockets, exhibited at the Grosvenor gallery in May 1877, which induced Ruskin to write the letter that led to the court case and bankruptcy in 1879. In 1878 he moved into The White House, 35 Tite Street, which had been designed for him by E.W. Godwin. However his bankruptcy forced him to sell it. in 1881 he lived at 13 Tite Street.
Cremourne Gardens, 1875 now at the Met in NY, featuring fashionable ladies in the pleasure gardens. He painted Thomas Carlyle in 1872, now in the Glasgow Art gallery.
During this period he developed a reputation as a fashionable dandy and dilettante, a social butterfly, very unlike the usual idea of a struggling artist.
In 1888 he married Beatrix Godwin, the wealthy widow of his friend E.W. Godwin, the Architect. They lived at 2 The Vale. They also lived at 454 Fulham Road and Finally at nos. 74 Cheyne Walk where he died. He was buried in Chiswick Old cemetery.[ From; Whistler by Pierre Cabanne]

Oscar Wilde, after an aside by Whistler; “Ah, I wish I’d said that”
Whistler; “You will, Oscar, You will”

Don Saltero
Chelsea Knackatory

The poem below was first published on Saturday June 22 in 1723, a copy can be found pasted in Volume two of Chelsea Miscellany.

Sir

Fifty years to Chelsea Great
From Bodmin on the Irish main
I strolled, with maggots in my pate
Where, much improved, they still remain

Through various employs I’ve past
A scraper, virtues projector
Tooth drawer, trimmer, and, at last
I’m now a gimcrack whim collector

Monsters of all sorts, here are seen
Strange things in nature as they grow fo
Some relicks of the Sheba Queen
And fragments of the fam’d Bob Cruso

Knick-knacks too dangle round the wall
Some in glass cases, some on shelf
But, what’s rarest sight of all
Your humble servant shews himself

On this my chiefest hope depends
Now, if you will cause and pause
In journals pray direct your friends
To my museum coffee house

And, in requital for the timely favour
I’ll, gratis, bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver
Nay, then your pate may with my noodle tally
And you shine bright as I do-marry shall ye
Freely consult my revelation Molly
Nor shall one jealous thought create a huff
For she has tought me manners long enough

Old Song with reference to Chelsea buns

The version below of an old song was sung at Bexhill at Christmas 1898 by an old man, eighty years of age, who said that he had learned it from his father. It was taken down at the time by Mr. Henry Young , son of Mr. Henry Young of Trafalgar Square Chelsea. A hand written version appears in Volume two of Chelsea Miscellany

As I went to Chelsea one day
I met a pretty fair maid on the highway
I asked to salute her, but this was her tune
Why cant you be easy and leave me alone?

I say my sweet creature
I’m not in for fun
If you come to the bun house
I’ll buy you a bun

Oh no! she replied
I’ve money enough of my own
To buy half a hundred
So leave me alone

I followed her, I followed her field after field
After persuading I brought her to yield
Next day I was wed, and she altered her tune
For she teases me now if I leave her alone

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