Fulham Road

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

The Fulham Road was the main highway west when the Kings Road was, up until 1830, a private road. “Between Kings Road and Fulham Road stretched formerly a great open heath reaching from Sidney Street to Sloane Square, notorious for footpads and highwaymen” The British Architect 1892 [ Chelsea Scraps 1-270 1897] This heath was replaced by market gardens to serve the growing city of London, subsequently by suburban villas, followed by terraced row houses and then finally mansion blocks. Incidentally the first mention of the Fulham road was in 1372.

South Kensington Underground Station.
South Kensington is, in fact, two stations in one. The glazed arcade with white terracotta entrance was for the Metropolitan and District Railway, designed by George Sherrin and dates from 1868.
The south side with its classic oxblood terracotta entrance was for the Piccadilly line designed by Leslie Green in 1906. This line, together with the Bakerloo and Northern Lines were owned at the time by the Chicago tycoon, Charles Tyson Yerkes, and known as the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway.
In 1974 the two stations were combined.
See; The Underground Stations of Leslie Green by David Leboff.

Proceed down Pelham Street to the corner of Fulham Road and Sloane Avenue, on the right is;

The Michelin Building, Bibendum.
The Michelin Building by Francoise Espinasse of Clermont -Ferrand in 1909-1911. Pevsner describes it as the “piece de resistance, a highly idiosyncratic and colourful three dimensional advertisement for the famous tyre company, somewhere between art nouveau and art deco”. The exuberantly decorated “marmo” tiles are by Hennebique and the charming pictorial panels are designed by the poster artist Ernest Montaut.
On the other corner of Sloane Avenue was the “Admiral Keppel” public house, at number 77, and previously known as the Cow and Calf. The original building dated from 1790, was rebuilt in 1856 and demolished sometime after 1958, for shops and flats above. Keppel Street changed its name to Sloane Avenue.

West along Fulham Road and on the north side

Pelham Crescent
The crescent was laid out by Basevi for the Smiths Charity estate in the 1840’s. The charity was initially set up in 1628 by Henry Smith to raise money to pay the ransom for seamen held by the Barbary pirates. The charity was sold to the Wellcome Trust in 1995 for £280 m. Ian Nairn in his book “Nairn’s London” describes the crescent thus; “It makes a perfect urban unit, formal but not rigid, self contained but not sealed up”. Cecil Beaton lived at 8 Pelham Place from 1935 to 1974.
“The Stag” pub was opposite until demolished in the 1930’s for the current blocks of flats.

West and opposite Sidney Place is;

Pond Place
Named in 1865, after the large village pond . Now the site of Onslow Dwellings, 1950’s flats. The pond was part of Chelsea Common spreading over 37 acres encompassed by Fulham Road, Sidney Street, Cale Street, Elystan Street, and Draycott Avenue. This common land was, according to observers at the time as agreeable as Clapham Common. Incidentally Charles I reviewed his troops on the common.
The land was enclosed in 1790 by the Cadogans where they built low grade houses, of which a few survive. These houses became slums and were replaced by early examples of social housing supported by private benefactors. Foe example The Samuel Lewis Housing Trust buildings were built in 1915 and The Sutton Trust in 1912, designed by E.C.P. Monson.
Sidney Hall was built in 1908 by the Chelsea Temperance Society. It now houses the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witness. Pond House was built in 1905 by Joseph & Smithem, note the art nouveau railings.

West and on the left is;

Sidney Street
St. Lukes Church. Reginald Blunt in his “Illustrated Historical Handbook of Chelsea”, 1900, noted one of the few interesting graves was that of Dr. John M’Loed who wrote “The Voyage of H.M.S. Alcesta to the Yellow Sea”.
The Brompton and National Heart & Chest Hospital, designed by Watkins Gray International and built in 1986-9. It was described by Pevsner as; “a long, deadening brick frontage quite out of tune with the scale of this part of Chelsea”.

Opposite and through an arch is;

Sidney Mews, Avenue Studios, 76 Fulham Road
The painter John Singer Sargent had a studio her from 1895, were he worked for the next 20 years, rather than his house in Tite Street. Here he worked on the murals for the Boston Public Library.
It was originally built in 1850 as a single studio and foundry for Baron Carlo Marochetti who lived behind at 34 Onslow Square. A sculptor he collaborated with Sir Edwin Landseer on the lions for Trafalgar Square. On his death in 1867 the studio was divided up into 15 separate studios, as they are today. Artists who have had studios there include William Linnell, Edward Poynter, Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, who reportedly had an affaire with a daughter of Queen Victoria, and his pupil Alfred Gilbert. He sculpted the iconic Eros in Piccadilly Circus, the Shaftsbury Memorial, Angel of Christian Charity, in 1895. Incidentally the model was an Italian boy called Colarossi.
The bar “PJ’s” was The Cranley Arms pub.

The large building on the south side, the left, is

The Royal Marsden Hospital.
It was founded in 1861 by William Marsden and was the first hospital in the world designed specifically for cancer patients. From 1851 to 1861 it was on the corner of Fulham Road and Hollywood Road and had 26 beds. Initially called the Cancer Hospital it was named the Royal Cancer Hospital in 1936 and the Royal Marsden in 1954.

On the right is Sumner Place with a detour north to;

Onslow Square
William Cecil Lord Burleigh [1520-1598] had recently acquired Brompton Hall, where Onslow Square now is, when he sheltered with Queen Elizabeth under the elm tree, see Queens Elm below. William Cecil’s son Robert Cecil [1563-1612] became 1st. Earl of Salisbury. The Rev. Scott thought that the hall was where the tube station now is. [ Little Chelsea by Rev. Walter Scott 1940]
The existing square, started in 1845, was developed by Sir Charles Freake to the designs of George Basevi. Onslow Gardens again by Freake were built in 1865. The entire area was owned by the charitable Smith’s Estate, and all the street names are after trustees of the charity.
On the 23 May 1940 the neo-nazi MP for Peebles Captain Archibald Henry Maule Ramsey was arrested on the steps of his house, 24 Onslow Square. Founder of the Right Club he was involved with spying for the Germans with Anna Volkov and Tyler Kent from the US embassy. He stole correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt. Ramsey spent the war in Brixton prison but was never charged or tried. The Right Club met above the Russian Tea room at 50 Harrington Road run by Anna Volkov and her family. The author of spy stories Len Deighton witnessed the arrest of Volkov, his mother worked at the tearoom.
William Thackarey lived at 36, and Bonar Law at 24 Onslow Gardens.
St Pauls Onslow Square was built in 1859 to the designs of James Edmeston.

Returning to the Fulham Road and on the right is;

Brompton Hospital
The foundation stone of The Hospital For Consumption and Diseases of the Chest at Brompton was laid on 11 June 1844. Built in the Tudor style and designed by F.H. Francis, with patterned red & blue brickwork and dressing of Caen stone. The hospital was founded by a solicitor, Philip Rose, a resident of Hans Place. Charles Dickens contributed to the charitable foundation. The Chapel was designed by the eccentric Gothic Revivalist Edward Buckton Lamb and completed in 1850. An extension was opened on the other side of the road in 1882 with a subway connecting the two buildings. The building was converted into luxury flats in 2004, and called “The Brompton”.

Cancer Research Centre.

Opposite the Bromptons is the Brompton Hospital South Block, built in 1880. Adjacent to this is the Cancer Research Centre. Previously it was the Chelsea Hospital for Women, established in 1871, and subsequently moved to Dovehouse Street. The bar opposite called Cactus Blue was the “The Rose” pub.

Further west and on the south side behind a brick wall is;

The Jews Burial Ground
The burial ground was opened in 1813 [Blunt] or 1816 [George Bryan “Chelsea in Olden Times and Present Times”, 1869] and closed before the end of the century. Blunt wrote that the two hands joined at the thumb which figure on many of the tomb stones denote the family of Cohen. There was an entrance building, with an inscription of 16th Psalm, in 1869 but it had gone by 1900. Bryan included an anecdote told to him by Rev. Owen, vicar of St. Judes Church Chelsea about a Hebrew friend who gave a toast thus “The Queen of the Jews and of no other nation”. His explanation was “J, [or I],E, W, S. makes Ireland, England, Wales, and Scotland, and J.E.W.S. spells Jews, and makes Victoria “Queen of the Jews, and of no other nation”.

On the left and going south is;

Old Church Street
Detailed in the Kings Road walk. Old Church Street north of the Kings Road was known as Duke’s Walk.

On the right going north is;

Selwood Terrace
Selwood Terrace, named in 1826, formally Salad Lane, and the site of Selwood Nursery where Narcissus Luttrell bred pear trees. The nursery was owned in 1780’s by a Frenchman Mr. Rubergall, introducing salads to London. On the opposite corner of Salad Lane William Curtis [1746-99] a celebrated botanist, entomologist and ornithologist established his famous botanical garden in 1789, moving from Bermondsey Street. He was a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Botanical Magazine. His portrait by Joseph Wright of Derby hangs in the RHS in Vincent Square. [See; Kensington by Geoffrey Evans, Hamish Hamilton 1975] It was also called Swan Lane after the pub on the corner with Old Brompton Road.
It is reported that at the end of the 18 th. century half of all the vegetables sold at Covent Garden where grown in the nurseries and market gardens on the Chelsea area. The most famous nursery in the area was the Brompton Park Nursery founded in the 1680’ by George London and Henry Wise. In 1690 it employed 22 people. The Victoria & Albert Museum now stands on the site. The Diarist Evelyn referred to the area with its “noble assembly of trees and evergreens”. The Brompton Stock is in memory of these nurseries.
Selwood Terrace, Selwood Place & Elm Place are late Georgian, 1824-6, their “primness” contrasting with “the lively” quoins, balconies and shaped dormers of Neville Terrace, opposite, of 1863, some forty years later. The owner of the Georgian development was Samuel Ware who built Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly, in 1819. The neo-Georgian Regency Terrace of 1960-4 was by Raymond J. Sargent.
The Rev Scott mentions a tradition that a foresters lodge was on the site of Selwood Place at the time of Henry VIII. He also mentions that émigré’s from the French revolution settled in Selwood terrace. One of these was Abbe Voyaeux de Prenous, a “clerge non-assermente” who narrowly escaped France in 1793, avoiding capture by the “gens d’armes”. Helived in the Queens Elm area for 40 years where he was a “missioner” setting up a catholic chapel in Lower George Street Chelsea. He became an honorary Canon of St. Denis in Paris. [ The Tablet, 12 December 1840/ Chelsea Scraps nos.5]
The novelist Charles Dickens stayed at 11 Selwood Terrace prior to marrying Catherine Hogarth at St. Lukes, Sidney Street, on 2 April 1836.

The Anglesea Arms, Selwood Terrace
Built in 1825-7 by a local builder James Ardin. Virginia Ironside in her book “Chelsea Bird” of 1964 noted “Young married mothers tripped along in expensive slacks with their shopping baskets to the King’s Road and I thought how nice it would be to be one of them, rich and silly and happy with another baby every year, nannies, gossips with other wives over lunch, and drinks in the Anglesea on Sunday mornings”.
It was named after The Duke of Anglesea who famously lost his leg at the Battle of Waterloo. There was a tradition at the time for senior officers to give to soldiers who had fought closely with them a small gift of money, sufficient to open a pub. The grateful recipient would often name the pub after his benefactor. It is rumoured that the initial planning for the Great Train Robbery took place in this pub.

Returning to the Fulham Road and on the south corner of Old Church Street was;

The Queen’s Elm Pub
G.B. Stuart in his book on Chelsea wrote in 1914; “Even as I write the hammers of the housebreakers are busy on the walls of The Queens Elm public house, an ugly structure enough which no one can regret for itself, though with the passing of its existence as a house of refreshment one fears its Elizabethan legend may disappear also. Here under an elm the Queen “ stood up” for shelter in a storm of rain with Lord Burleigh, who inherited the Dacre property in Chelsea and Brompton, and was probably conducting her majesty to one or other of his newly acquired properties. Elizabeth was fond of paying surprise visits to her subjects, and on one occasion when she went to Beaufort House unexpectedly, in its owner’s absence, she was unrecognised and refused admittance. Under the elm at the corner of Church Street and Fulham Road legend says she and her great minister talked of umbrellas, which about this time were first introduced from the east, but were not yet in general, even royal, use. As I passed the old public house, the stucco frontage of which was falling in clouds of dust to the ground, I saw for the first time a beautiful pitched and red tiled roof disclosed at the back of the building. It, too, may be gone to-morrow, but I like to think I have caught a glimpse of the roof that sheltered Queen Bess”.
“The Queens Tree” tavern was recorded in parish records in 1586 and 1667. Other names include “The Cross Tree”, “The Nine Elms” and The High Elm” by Sir Hans Sloane in 1727 [Blunt].
Richard Edmonds notes that “Until 1847”, says Rev. Scott in his monograph “Little Chelsea”, “there was a toll house and gates across the Fulham Road at this spot, a round white house in the middle of the road with white bars on either side”.
The landlord of the pub in the seventies, Sean Treacy, published a book, ”A Smell of Broken Glass”. Published by Tom Stacey on 1973.
It was closed in the 1980’s and is now shops with a flower stall in front

Further along was

The Apron Strings
A famous night club in the mid 1950’s was at 261 Fulham Road run by J.T. Walker. Its phone number was FLAxman 8672

On the right is

Cranley Gardens
The severe and tall red brick houses date from 1884. St Peters Church was built in 1868, twenty years earlier, by Sir Charles Freak. The two essentials for a property developer at the time was to first build a church and a public house. There was a recession in the 1870’s which delayed the development. The church is now the Armenian Church.

Followed by

Evelyn Gardens
Numbers 2 to 10 were built by C.A. Daw and Sons in 1886, and numbers 50 to 70 in 1890-93

On the left, south side, is

Elm Park Gardens
The existing development was laid out in 1885 by George Godwin who, with his brother Henry Godwin who; “experienced, as well as contributed to, the vast development of Brompton and South Kensington as it was transformed into one of the main elite residential areas of the capital” from Anthony King in “Architectural History” published in 1976. The houses were built in 1894 in gault brick. The Park side buildings were demolished in the mid 1960’s and replaced by blocks of flats, a policy of scrap and rebuild.
Vladimir Nabokov moved with his family in 1918 to Elm Park Gardens, fleeing Lenin’s Russia. Joyce Grenfell lived at 34 Elm Park gardens from 1956 to 1979, after leaving Chelsea. Other post war residents included Laurie Lee, who drank at the Queens Elm with Dylan Thomas, the sculptress Elizabeth Frink and the painter John Bratby, the painter of “the Kitchen Sink School” did a painting of Elm Park Gardens in 1955.
See the article on Elm Park Gardens by the poet Laurie Lee in “A Place called Chelsea “edited by John Gullick.
A more distinguished resident was the First Viscount Morley [1838-1923] an author and statesman he was Secretary of State for India.
. Also in Elm Park Gardens scenes from the cult film “The Party’s Over” directed by Guy Hamilton and starring Oliver Reed were shot. [md]
The author’s grand parents lived at 68 in the late 1930’s.

At the south end of Elm Park Gardens is;

Elm Park Road
Numbers 74 and 78 were designed in 1883 by J.P. Seddon for Henry Pilleau and P. Williams, both landscape painters. Number 76, again by Seddon was for Paul and Isabel Naftel and their daughter Maud.

A bit of historical background

Chelsea Park
Consisted of 32 acres north of the Kings Road between Park Walk and Upper Church Street. It formed part of the estate of Sir Thomas More and was called “Sand Hills”. It was enclosed with a brick wall in 1625 by the Lord Treasure Cranfield and renamed Chelsea Park [Bryan]. In the 1680’s it was leased to John Thorley, a victualler. Subsequently it was owned by Lord Wharton, Thomas Wharton, Marquis of Wharton [1648-1715] who lived at Danvers House, now Paulton Square. Wharton’s claim to fame was as the reputed author of “Lilliburlero”, the famous anti-Jacobite song celebrating the flight of James II with “scatter the papishes” [Blunt]
In 1718 the park was leased by The Raw Silk Company who planted 2,000 mulberry trees. The idea of silkworms was that of John Appletree, supported by Henry Barham, a surgeon who had practised in Jamaica and settled in Chelsea in 1716, he issued 10,000 shares at £5 each. It is reported that the transactions took place at the Marine Coffee Shop in Exchange Alley in the City.
“A sample of the satin”, writes Ralph Thoresby in 1723, “lately made in Chelsea of English silkworms for the Princess of Wales was very rich and beautiful” [Blunt] The Company however crashed in 1724, partly due to Sir Robert Walpole’s free trade policy. They also planted both White and Black mulberrys when the white one is the only one silk worms will eat. The collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 did not help.
Mulberry Walk, off Old Church Street, is named after these mulberry trees of which a few survive, i.e. in the gardens behind Elm Park gardens and in Elm Park Road.
Croker writes that Walpole, in his “Catalogue of Engravers”, tells us that James Christopher Le Bon, a Fleming by birth, and a mezzotint-engraver, set up in 1732 a project for coping the Raphael cartoons in tapestry. Houses were built and looms erected in the mulberry grounds at Chelsea. But nothing came of it.
The Park was sold to Richard Manningham in 1724 and in 1727 the park was sold off in plots. A Dr. Bloomfield built a large house in the Park fronting onto the Fulham Road, referred to as The Mansion House. He was Surgeon to the Queens household. It was demolished around 1876 and replaced in 1884 by a large detached Victorian house known as Elm Park House. This in turn was demolished by Chelsea Borough Council and replaced by the current tower block which the Council had acquired by compulsory purchase orders in 1945 for the entire Elm Park Gardens Estate.

Proceeding west along Fulham Road on the left is;

Beaufort Street
The northern extension of Beaufort Street from the Kings Road occurred in the late 1880’s with the demolition of Camera Square, he section south of the Kings Road dates from 1766. Chelsea Park Dwellings were built in 1885 for the poor, and the rather “unsightly” [Survey of London] Elm Park Parade, 134-140, in 1888.
The suburban villas of Chelsea Park gardens, in the style of Norman Shaw and the Garden Suburb Movement, were built in the 1920’s by E.F.M. Elms & Sydney Jupp
The famous painter of horses Sir Alfred Munnings lived at 96 Chelsea Park Gardens, he was most critical of modern art and the “foolish daubers” Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. The cartoonist Oliver Preston lives in the garret flat.
And on the right is;

Drayton Gardens
Originally called Thistle Grove it passes north through what used to be the wastelands of Brompton Heath, a wild and desolate place mainly visited for snipe shooting. The Rev. Scott quotes Besant as describing the place as “The dreary heath, that no man might cross with impunity after dark.”
The houses in the southern part date from 1810, the mansion blocks to the north, 49,51 and 53 are by J. Norton dated 1894-97 and 59 somewhat later in 1904. The elegant palace style terraces et the north end are by the architect John Blore, the even numbers date from 1846 to 1863, the odd numbers1859 to 1863.
The famous art cinema The Paris Pullman was at number 65, it was built in 1910 as the Radium Picture House. It re-opened on 4 November 1955 as the Paris Pullman. It was demolished in the 1983.
In the adjacent Thistle Grove Lane lived for many years John Burke whose genealogical inquiries allowed him to publish “The Peerage” [Croker]. Also living there were J.P.Warde an actor who died in 1840 and the comedian Benjamin Webster.
There was a skating rink at the south end of Roland gardens in 1879.

Returning to the Fulham Road the next section is;

Little Chelsea and “The Beach”
The first reference to Little Chelsea is, according to The Survey of London, in 1618 as “Lylle Cheley”. However prior to that records show that in 1599 the land to the north of the Fulham Road was sold by Sir Robert Cecil to the Earl of Lincoln. It was then sold to Sir Michael Warton in 1651 who owned it until at least 1725. The architect Henry Holland sold part of the land in 1786.
Richard Edmonds in his book “Chelsea- From Five Fields to Worlds End” published in 1956 noted that in May 1663 Pepys recorded in his diary; “so walked to Little Chelsea, and very merry”.
A month later a notable French man of science, de Monconys, described a visit to the home of his fellow scientist Robert Boyle; “L’apres dinee je fus-a dues milles de Londres en carosse pour cinq chelins a un village nomme le petit Chelse”.
Robert Boyle [1627-91], of Boyle’s Law fame, had, in 1661, a house in Little Chelsea to the north of Fulham Lane. The diarist John Evelyn describes a visit to the house amid the chaos of” glasses, potts, chymical and mathematical instruments, books and bundles of papers which did so fill and crowd his bed-chamber that there was but just room for a few chairs” [ from Richard Edmond’s Book] The same house was the birthplace of Charles Boyle, 4th. Earl of Orrery [1676-1731] after whom the Orrery was named.
Again according to the Survey of London in 1666 there were 7 houses in Little Chelsea of a size that warranted the payment of the hearth tax.
Little Chelsea was a distinct and separate from Chelsea from 1650 to 1840 when it became absorbed into Greater Chelsea [Chelsea Scraps 1-270, 1897] Little Chelsea Street was recorded in 1671. Little Chelsea is recorded in Hamilton’s map of 1664, updated 1717.
The Connoisseur Club, just off the Fulham Road in the 1980’s smelled of “Sweat, money and sex”.

On the corner of Drayton gardens and Fulham Road is;
The Cinema
Built in 1930 as The Forum Cinema by J. Stanley Beard & Clare with according to Pevsner “prominent bowed foyer articulated by giant order Corinthian columns and Olympiad bronze torches,” by the architect H.A. Yapp.

Followed by what was;

The Clifton Arms Pub
Closed in 1971 and now an estate agent. The existing building was built in 1849 but there are records of an ale house there from 1768 with bowling green and skittle ground behind, now Cavaye Place.

Then, on the south side

Callow Street
Callow Street named in 1861 after the family of a publican who established a building company in the 1840’s and was employed by Lord Cadogan to build new streets on his estate [Street names from; Kensington & Chelsea Names by B.R. Curle & Mrs. P.K. Pratt, K&C Libraries]
Cavaye Place 1937 and formerly Clifton Place, Chelsea Grove, after former Lord Mayor of Kensington, Major general W.F. Cavaye in 1907.

With, opposite;

Office Block
The sheer glass office block is a harsh interruption of 1972 by Turner, Lansdown, Holt & Partners of brick and stucco terraces built in 1847. These in turn replaced 8 weatherboarded cottages called Bowling Green Row and built in 1793.

Further on and on the south side, left, is;

Park Walk
A non-conformist church, Park Chapel, was built in Park Walk in 1718 by Sir Richard Manningham, the chief man-mid-wife of his day [acoucheur]. In Mitton’s book on Chelsea, published in 1902, it was reported that General Gordon received Holy Communion in the chapel before his ill fated journey to Khartoum. His brother Sir Henry Gordon was a chapel warden and lived in Elm Park Road. The Chapel and its associated school was demolished in 1913 and replaced by St. Andrews Parish Church.
Chelsea Park, in which the chapel was sited, was leased by Manningham from William Sloane on 31 May 1724, following the collapse of the silk project.
Soon after this date four Georgian houses were built at the north end of Park walk, adjacent to the Goat in Boots pub. According to the Survey of London of 1913; “Nos 5 Park walk retains its stair and panelled hall, and is the best preserved of the group”. And the Rev Scott “excellent examples pf the period, the fabric of the houses are mostly original and are worthy of examination”.
Nos. 3 was demolished to make way for the new and enlarged pub.
The library has a reference to a picture of 5-11 Park Walk in 1725 with shop fronts inserted, unfortunately the illustration has disappeared.
The rest of the houses on the east side of Lover’s Walk were built in the latter part of the 18 th. Century. The present name, Park Walk, dates from 1886. In 1869 George Bryan describes the Walk thus; “After dark from its retirement and seclusion the area was dangerous for persons passing that way, it has degenerated into Tupenny Walk”.
The school at the south end is a typical Victorian Board school, red brick with expanse of windows and oversized gables and built after the famous 1870 Education Act to the designs of E.R. Robson.
At the Royal Court’s Theatre Scenic Workshop in Park Walk scenes from Tony Richardson’s 1960 film “A Taste of Honey” with Rita Tushingham were shot. [md]
Francis Aliamet, a good engraver, brother of the better known Jacques Aliamet, gives his address in 1763 as “near the chapel, Chelsea” which was probably Park Chapel. [Croker]
The gloriously named Man in the Moon pub at the end of Park walk dates back to 1769 but the Edwardian interior was sadly gutted in 2003. Progress!
William Donaldson, compiler of The Henry Root Letters and much else besides lived at 139 Elm Park Mansions, Park Walk.

With on the corner;

The Goat in Boots Pub
It was originally a coaching inn on Fulham Lane, the turnpike from London to the South West. It was owned in 1671 by the Hon. Thomas Wharton and known as the Goat. He sold it to Sir Hans Sloane in 1713 as the Goat in Boots. Its name is said to derive from the Dutch “Mercurius is der Goden Boode”, that is Mercury is the messenger of the gods. Mercury was a sign used by inns where post horses were kept, and “de goden boode” was very freely translated into “goat in boots”. Thea Holme in her book on Chelsea said that;” the original figure of the god’s messenger is believed to have been ingeniously transformed by the artist George Morland [1763-1804] into the figure of a goat in top boots, with cutlass and spurs. A crude copy of Morland’s painted sign on the side of the building is all, alas, that remains of the original goat in boots. Morland was frequently in a state of financial embarrassment, and painted several signs in payment for his drinks, his own epitaph on himself being “here lies a drunken dog”. He painted the sign for the now long gone Cricketers pub. [From Chelsea by Thea Holme, Hamish Hamilton 1972, see also Blunt and Croker]
The current pub was built in 1888 by Messrs Turtle and Appelton from the designs and under the supervision of Mr. T.H. Smith.

And opposite;

Gilston Road
Behind the houses on the west side are situated 27 studios, Bolton Studios, developed in 1883-88 by the sculptor Charles Bacon. Artists who have lived there include; Theodore Roussel, Thomas Kennington, and Maurice Greiffenhagen. The church steeple in the distance is of St. Mary The Boltons

Further along is;

Health Club
The existing building now housing the health club was built in 1902 by Frederick Humpherson, replacing three cottages built in 1789. According to Betty Elzea in the Chelsea Society Report [2005] Thomas Crapper had his yard there in the late 1940’s. It was named Holmes Place in 1838, some claim after a local builder and landowner Jeffrey Holmes.

Followed by

Kings Arms Pub. Previously Finch’s.
The site of a pub since at least 1760 the current building was erected in the 1860’s with the front dating from 1890 by H.I. Newton. Previously known as The Kings Arms it was owned in 1904 by a Mr. Henry H. Finch, which may be the source of its name today. In late 2007 it was “re-done-up” and renamed The Kings Arms.
In 1966 Ian Nairn noted in his book “Nairn’s London” that; “Thirty years ago it was one of the favourite and most fashionable pubs of artistic Chelsea. In more recent times it has dropped into relative obscurity, but it retains something of its old décor, with its bare wood floor, Victorian advertising mirrors and general ruggedness”.
The pub is mentioned in Joan Wyndham’s book “Love is Blue”; “ Petya and I saw This Gun For Hire at the Forum cinema. Afterwards we strolled down the Fulham Road and as we were passing the Servite Church a terrific storm broke, with pink lightning forking over the roof tops…. The storm was abating. We went down the road to Finch’s pub where he made me very drunk on double whiskies-it must have been about then that I suddenly decided I would like to sleep with him”.

And what was;

Wolsey’s Wine Bar
One of the first wine bars in England, it was at 198 Fulham Road from 1970 to 1983.

Opposite was;

Duffield House
Between Park Walk and the hospital there was in the 17th century a large mansion owned by Sir John Cope MP, who died there in 1721. His son, Sir John Cope, was defeated at Prestonpans in the Forty-Five and who was mocked by the Jacobites in their song; “Hey,Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet?” The house was subsequently occupied by Duffield, owner of the infamous Chelsea Academies, a private mad house for persons of consequence. One of the patients was Alexander Cruden [d.1770] author of a biblical concordance. {See monograph “Little Chelsea” by Rev. W.S. Scott, 1940]
The ale house “The Three Jolly Butchers” was next door from 1740’s
According to Croker on the north side of the road stood, in 1860, Manor Hall, occupied by St. Philip’s Orphanage. Previously it had been a ladies boarding school and where Miss Bartolozzi and Madame Vestris were educated.

Further west, on the left is;

Limerston Street
Previously known as Chelsea Village and George Street the attractive pairs of linked villas date from the 1850’. There was a thriving “Life Class” for artists in Limerston Street in the 1880’s

With, on the right, north side;

Redcliffe Road
The road and typical terraced houses date from 1861-66.
Joan Wyndham in her book “Love is Blue” about her life during the second World War has a flat in Redcliffe Road;” Subra was there too, Annie’s boyfriend, looking exotic and oriental in his red scarf, and little Gerald Wilde who used to paint in my studio in Redcliffe Road, with his long raggedy overcoat, prehensile nose and wild roving eyes”. She also reports meeting Dylan Thomas who had a flat in the Road;
“ Pretty WAAF”, he breathed lasciviously, edging in to a bar stool beside me. “ What is your name?”
I said I was Joan, and what was his?
I’m Dylan Thomas, and I’m fucking skint” he said. “Be a nice girl and buy me a drink”.

Dylan Thomas lived at 5 Redcliffe Road before moving to 3 Wentworth Studios, Manresa Road in 1942.

The artists Edward Bawden lived at nos. 52, known then as Holbien Studios, from 1929-33, and Eric Ravilious from 1930-31.

Next on the right is;

Seymour Walk
One of the earliest, and most unchanged, parts of Little Chelsea there is a record of Sir John Griffin having a house there in 1650. The impressive house, 1-3 Seymour walk, dates from 1793, built by a Mr. Mayoss and was for much of its life a Girls Acadamy, from 1821 until 1939. For part of this time it was an asylum for destitute females. The house next door, nos 3a, and called St. Dunstans Studios, was built in 1904 by C.H.B. Quennell. A Mr. Omar Ramsden, who made the cross and candlesticks for St Mary’s Church lived there. The rest of the houses in the cul-de-sac represent an interesting progression of one hundred and fifty years of domestic architecture, from 1810 to 1964. On the west side; nos 5:1829, Nos 7-11: post war, nos 11-27:1810, nos 29-47:1889, nos 49-53:1964. On the east side; nos 22-58:1810, nos14-20:1839, nos 10-12:1845, nos 6-8:1855, nos 2:1845. Source; Survey of London
The artist Mary Moser RA lived in Seymour Walk in the 18 th. century. The Somerset Arms public house was on the west corner, initially built in 1794, and rebuilt in 1881, and still open in 1983.. Seymour Walk was previously called Seymour Place and Seymour Terrace.
According to Croker at nos. 36 Seymour Place expired on the 19 June 1824 in her twenty-fifth year Madame Riego, the widow of the unfortunate patriot General Riego “the restorer and martyr of Spanish freedom”.
According to Max Decharne [md] Iggy Pop and The Stooges rehearsed in “The Hole” in Seymour Walk
The Somerset Arms pub was on the corner, replaced by a pizza restaurant

The large modern building on the left is;

Chelsea & Westminster Hospital , previously Shaftsbury House.
The site was originally that of Shaftsbury House, built in 1635, which first belonged to the Rt. Hon. Sir James Smith [d.1681], and was bought and rebuilt in 1700 by Anthony Ashley Cooper the third Earl of Shaftsbury, and a close friend of Addison who lived at Sands End House and John Locke. He wrote “Essays of Human Understanding” in the summer house in 1690.
Suffering from asthma he sold it in 1710 to the bibliophile Narcissus Luttrell who lived there until his death in 1732. He is buried in Chelsea Old Church. His diary for December 1722 reads;” Down to the Magpie in Chelsey where there was a meeting of Justices, we settled and chose new surveyors of the highways. We dined there at 3 and broke up about 5”. Sir Walter Scott acknowledged Luttrell’s library in his preface to the works of Dryden.
The house was purchased by the Parish of St George Hanover Square in 1787 and became part of a St George’s workhouse. At that time a parish was responsible for its poor but did not necessarily have to care for them in their own parish, moving them “down the road and out of sight”. In 1848 it had 400 infant and aged poor.
It was rebuilt in 1858 as St. Georges Union Workhouse
In 1878 a major new hospital was built next to the workhouse, designed by Saxon Snell and called St. George’s Union Infirmary. It was renamed St. Stephens Hospital in 1924. [ See: The Hospital in Little Chelsea by C.M. Howgrave-Graham & L.J. Martin] In this book the authors mention an interesting story: “The death on 23 February 1920 of Annie Elizabeth Crook, who had been admitted to the infirmary a few days previously from the next door workhouse with cardiac failure, highlights a connection, if somewhat tenuous, between the infirmary and Jack the ripper. Recent researches, Jack the Ripper by Stephen Knight, show that Annie Crook had in the early 1880’s entered into a clandestine ceremony of marriage with Prince Albert Victor [1864-92], otherwise known as Prince Eddy the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII and Alexandra. This union resulted in the early birth of a daughter who was born in a Marylebone Workhouse. Eddy died prematurely and Annie became ill shortly after his death and was admitted to various workhouses and hospitals. It is said that certain of the witnesses to the marriage ceremony were later to become victims of Jack the Ripper and that they were permanently silenced to cover up yet another example of Prince Eddy’s scandalous behaviour”.
At St Stephens on 3 August 1963 Stephen Ward, a key player in the Profumo affair, died of an overdose on Nembutal. [md]
The hospital was replaced in 1963 by the new Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, by Sheppard Robson, and was opened by the Queen in 1993. Was she aware of her families connection with the site?
In the hospital’s chapel there is “The Resurrection” by Veronese [1528-1588]. It was acquired by the Trustees of Westminster Hospital in 1950 for £9,000. It was originally bought in Venice in 1767 by Sir James Wright who sold it in 1771 to the Earl of Lonsdale who in turn sold it at auction in 1947.
[In 1636 Sir Francis Kynaston moved his Museum Minervae from London to Little Chelsea. He had a school for the sons of noblemen; he was a cup bearer to Charles I but resigned as he trembled so much.]

And opposite

The Brompton Cottages
Built in 1971 by Ian Fraser & Associates as “rather stark modernist dwellings over shops”. [Pevsner]. Previously the site held Marsden’s original Cancer Hospital, built as a villa called Hollywood Lodge in 1820 and converted into the hospital in 1850 where it stayed for 10 years. This was demolished and replaced in 1869 by shops.

Next on the right and going north is;

Hollywood Road
According to the Survey of London there are records in the 1660’s of a sizeable brick house, owned by Henry Middleton, to the immediate west of what is now Hollywood Road and Tesco’s on the Fulham Road. The family were extensive land owners in the area and also in Barbados and the southern states of America, Henry was a governor of South Carolina. His son William Middleton [1710-1775] owned a large house to the east where Redcliffe Road now runs, his son sold the house in 1776 as he lived in Charlston. Incidentally his cousin Arthur Middleton was one of the signatories of The Declaration of Independence.
Returning to Henry Middleton’s house in the 1770’s a certain Louis Lochee opened a Military Academy in what is believed to be the same house. The Rev Scott called it Bolton House. Lochee built fortifications in the grounds and it was from there that in 1784 an ascent was made by two balloonists, Blanchard and Sheldon. They reached Romsey in Hampshire. The event was commemorated in the sign of the Hollywood pub, since removed.
Lochee died in mysterious circumstances when involved in an independence movement to liberate Brabant from the Austrians. His death was recorded in The Gentleman’s Magazine in June 1791; “At Lisle, in Flanders, Lewis Lochee Esq., late Lieutenant Colonel of the Belgic Lion, and former keeper of the Royal Military Academy in Chelsea”. In 1892 the house, Hollywood House, was owned by a Captain Nesbit.
The Famous Bistro Vino restaurant was owned by Mr. Eddows.
Cathcart Road was named in 1865 after the great Crimea War hero Lord Cathcart. Brompton Road goes back to 1294 and Broome Farm, Tregunter Road 1852, after Tregunter home of the Gunter family between Talgarth and Brecon in Wales.
It is recorded that Clair Bloom and Rod Steiger lived at 14 Fawcett Street.
Morton Edwards, secretary of the Society of Sculptors, built a studio house at 16 Hollywood road, opening to the rear of 27 Cathcart Road. Built by Corbett and McClymont in a naïve romanesque style with two ground level shops.Edward Hughs leased it in 1891.

Proceed up and left into Fawcett Street and then fight into;

Oakfield Street and The Gunter Estates
A certain James Gunter acquired the leasehold of the land owned by Louis Lochee in 1784. He was a successful Mayfair confectioner with a shop in Berkeley Square. The company currently trades as Payne & Gunter, caterers. His son Robert steadily purchased plots and, in 1836, the freehold. By 1850 he had assembled some 93 acres. It was his two sons, Robert and James, who, on their return from the Crimean War, started the major development program, starting with The Boltons. Much of the estate was sold in 1917. Sir Ronald Gunter, the last baronet, died in 1980 with no sons.
The architects were the brothers George and Henry Godwin. They started with St Mary’s Church in 1849, at a cost of £3,000. The Boltons were built between 1850 and 1860, Oakfield Street in the 1860’s, The Hollywood pub in 1865 and the Redcliffe Mansions in Redcliffe Square in 1870’s. Most of the 1,100 houses in the area where built, to the Godwin designs, by the builders William Corbett and Alexander McClymont. They went spectacularly bankrupt in 1875, to the tune of £1.5 million, partially due to the cost of building St. Lukes, Redcliffe Square.
George Godwin [1813-1888] main claim to fame was as editor, from 1844 to 1888, of the influential magazine, The Builder, The Illustrated Weekly Magazine for Architects, Engineer, Archaeologist, Constructor and Art Lover. [See George Godwin by Anthony King in Architectural History 1976 Vol. 19] He is not to be confused with the glamorous architect and theatre designer Edward William Godwin [1833-1886] who designed Whistler’s White House in Tite Street and had an affair with the actress Ellen Terry.
Named in 1852 after the Bolton family who owned land in the area. Augustus Hare in his book “Walks in London”, in 1878, noted that The Boltons “was very popular with artists and where forty years ago six brace of partridge were seen to rise” and “The country aspect of the Boltons was described in Lord Lytton’s novel “Godolphin”.
The founders of Harvey Nichols, the famous Knightsbridge shop, lived in the Boltons in the 1850’s, James Nichols at nos. 10, and Mrs Benjamin Harvey at nos. 5. Incidentally the current building dates from 1889, designed by C.W. Stephens who also did Claridges Hotel [Source; Survey of London Vol. XLV]

In 1964 Judy Garland rented a house in Bolton Gardens, and she died in 1969 in 4 Cadogan Lane. [md]

This rapid change in the nature of the area is exemplified by William Gaunt in his book Kensington & Chelsea where he quotes Crofton Croker in his book “a Walk from London to Fulham”, published in 1860. “ Now is Brompton all built or being built over, which makes the precise locality of crescents and rows puzzling to old gentlemen. Its heath is gone and its grove represented by a few dead trunks and some unhealthy looking trees which stand by the roadside, their branches lopped and their growth restrained by order of the district surveyor”.

Further north in the Boltons is Bousfield School. Built in 1954-6 by Chamberlin Powell & Bon for the LCC. Pevsner’s view “ a notable example of the low, colourful, child scaled school built after the war as a reaction against the old inner London three deckers”.

Returning to the Fulham Road and turninh west there was;

The Palmer-Verney House
In the 1650’s four houses were built facing the Fulham Road between Hollywood Road and what is now Redcliffe Gardens;
The Palmer-Verney House where the Servite school playground now is. In 1680 John Verney married Ralph Parmer’s Daughter Elizabeth and lived in the house. He commuted from this house to his merchants office in the City but had an unpleasant choice of transport; “ by land tis unsafe for rogues, and by water tis cold besides a good walk in ye dirt and dark from Greate to Little Chelsey”. {Survey of London} His son Ralph became Lord Fermanagh in 1717 and Earl of Verney in 1720 and died in Little Chelsea in 1752. The house, though much changed, was only demolished in 1962 and the gates still survive.
House where Barker Street now runs. Mulberry House. Records also show that in 1681 a Nicholas Staggins, master of the Kings Musick, had a house at 264 Fulham Lane. The Servite Church, built in 1874, now stands on the site. Heckfield Lodge, was Burleigh House School from 1835-65 according to the Rev Scott.

Netherton Grove
The New English Art Club met at the studio of the artist Fred Brown.

On the right, with the traffic coming down is;

Redcliffe Gardens
Which was the prestigious N-S Boulevard of the Gunter Estate, begun in 1841 with very large semi-detached houses of stock brick with rich Italianate stucco dressings. Redcliffe Square, a cohesive group of tall elegantly dressed brick villas designed by George & Henry Godwin in 1869-76. “These demonstrate the disintegration of the Italianate tradition. Each house boasts an elaborate porch with red granite columns and stiff leaf capitals, Continuous iron balustrades, keystones and cornice consoles display an eclectic mixture of Gothic detail, abstract lozenges and bevelled panels”. Nikolaus Pevsner, London.
Was named in 1869 after the Redcliffe area of Bristol where the estate architects had done previous work... Edith Grove was named in 1878 after “Edith”, one of the three daughters of Robert Gunter. Finborough Road,1867, and formerly Honey Lane, names after Finborough Hall near Stowmarket, country residence of the Pettiward Family, owners of the area.
Little Chelsea had, in 1765, its own gibbet where a Chelsea pensioner was hanged for the murder of a man named Knight. The Rev. Scott records that the body hung there for several years, and was referred to as a tassel. The gallows stood on the south side of Fulham Lane opposite the end of Walnut Tree Walk, now Redcliffe Gardens.
At the other end of Redcliffe Gardens, on 18 December 1966, at the junction of Old Brompton Road, a car crash involving the Guinness heir Tara Guinness inspired John Lennon, a friend, to write the song “A Day in the Life” which included the lines; “I read the news today, about a lucky man who made the grade. He blew his mind out in his car. He did not know the lights had changed”. This is according to Roger George Clark in his book “Chelsea Today”, and The Kings Road by Max Decharne.
The Café des Artiste opened at 266 Fulham Road in 1960. [md] The building dates from 1868 but was extensively remodled in 1960 following a fire.
In October 1962 the Rolling Stones were living, in some squalor, in 102 Edith Grove, and played at The Wetherby Arms at 500 Kings Road. [md]

South extension of Redcliffe Gardens

Edith Grove
The artist Allen Jones of ladies legs fame lived at 16 Edith Grove from 1966 to 1976. The street was named, in 1878, after Edith, one of the three daughters of Robert Gunter, the landowner.

Gunter Grove
Virtually all the buildings on the entire west side had garden studios, very popular in the 1890’s. The sculptor Alfred Drury had a studio here. The pub ,”The Gunter Arms, on the corner is currently closed.

Ifield Road
Formerly Honey Lane, and a path from Holland House in Kensington to the River. Tony Blair rented a basement flat at 92 Ifield Road in 1975.

Proceed west to, on the right

Brompton Cemetery
Founded as the West London and Westminster Cemetery in 1837 and consecrated in 1840 and sold to the government in 1852. The central octagonal chapel and colonnades were designed by Benjamin Baud. For details of those buried at the cemetery see “ 50 Notable People-A selection with accessible and legible monuments” by Robert Stephenson of The Friends of Brompton Cemetery.
Beyond the cemetery is an attractive parade of early Victorian terrace houses with a central pediment and arched windows on the first floor. They would have been built some 25 years before the houses in Redcliffe Gardens.

And opposite, was;

Knight’s Exotic Nursery
Located between the Fulham Road and Kings Road, Gunter Grove and Hortensia Road, Founded in 1808 by Joseph Knight and John Perry, they sold it in 1853 to John Veitch. [see separate article] and in 1914 it was sold for development.
Currently there is a petrol station on part of the site.

Further west on the south side is

St Marks College
The College was set up in 1841 as The National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principle of the Established Church. They bought the adjacent Stanley House as the residence for the Principal and built the school including the Octagon.
Leo Tolstoy visited the college on 12 March 1861. Essays prepared for him by pupils can be seen in the Tolstoy museum in Moscow.
In 2002 the site was jointly developed by European Land and Northacre, with 275 apartments and 14 houses, and called Kings Chelsea. Northacre were responsible for The Bromptons, Earls Terrace and Observatory Gardens.

Behind which is;

Stanley House
The house was originally built some time before 1625 by Sir Arthur George, a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser and a cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh. On his death in 1625 the property went to has daughter, the wife of Sir Robert Stanley
William Hamilton, British envoy at the court of Naples and husband of Lady Hamilton, bought the house in 1815. He accompanied Lord Elgin to Greece. He added a large picture gallery on the east side which contained a series of casts from the Elgin marbles fixed round a frieze.
The house was renovated in 2002 at a cost of £10 million.

Further west on the north side is;

Billings Road
The houses were originally Canal-side cottages dating from 1846-50. The Kensington Canal dated from 1828 when Counter’s Creek, a former tidal estuary of the Thames was made navigable. By 1836 it failed and was sold to the LNW & GWR railway in 1859 and filled in. Previously called St. Marks Road in 1874 it was renamed Billings in 1939 after the proprietor of the medicinal springs Billings Well that were nearby, or after a stream Billing Well Dyche which dates from 1475. [ Kensington & Chelsea Street Names by B.R. Curle & Mrs. P.K. Pratt. K&C Libraries]
The “Fox and Pheasant” pub is one of the last pubs in the area to have a traditional split bar, a public bar and a saloon bar. Blatantly class based the beer was cheaper in the public bar, and the saloon bar had a carpet. In 1904 it was not a pub but a “beer retailer” run by a Mrs. Jane Myes, in 1946 it was still a beer retailer run by Arthur Tomkinson and only became a pub in 1972.
The bar on the corner was “The Black Bull” pub and currently closed.

Next is

Stamford Bridge
First referred to as Samfordbregge in 1410, and then Sandford Bridge, as Little Chelsea Bridge in 1582 and Stamford Bridge in 1635. It was rebuilt in 1762, 1828 & 1860. The Chelsea Creek was canalised and called Kensington Canal. This was in turn replaced by a railway line.

Beyond the bridge on the left are the new complex of the famous;

Chelsea Football Club
It was founded in May 1905 by two contractors, Gus and Joe Mears. The prospectus was issued by “The Chelsea Football and Athletic Company Limited”. In that year they leased the current site from the old London Athletic Club which was built on the site of Jacques Poupart’s market garden, dating from 1770’s. It joined the league in 1905.

Further on and behind a high wall are;

Chelsea Studios or Italian Village, 410 Fulham Road.
This collection of 30 Italianate styled artist studios in the shadow of “shed end” of the Chelsea Football ground was transformed in the 1930’s by an Italian sculptor Mario Maneti and his glamorous Russian wife and model Bushka from two late Victorian houses. Painters who lived and worked there include Pietro Annigoni [1910-88] who painted the Queen twice and the portrait painter Aubrey Davidson-Houston [1906-95] An earlier resident of the area was William Holman Hunt, he painted his iconic “The Light of the World” there.
Just prior is a classic 1960’s block of flats called the West London Studios.
The bar restaurant opposite, the Hook, was “The Rising Sun pub.

Then the;

The Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation

Further on again were;

Fulham Studios, 454a Fulham Road
In 1885 Whistler, Sickert and the Greaves Brothers had studios there. In 1913 Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his wife Sophie rented a studio there, at £26 per annum. He died in the First World War.

Finally

Fulham Broadway Tube Station
In a twenty-first century mini mall

Notes

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