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Chelsea area and property guide

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Why live in Chelsea

People choose to live in Chelsea because of the restaurants, shopping, local amenities, period architecture and garden squares. The area is synonymous with prestigious London residential living.

Property for sale:
There are a wide range of houses from small mews to a few large detached mansions. A wide range of flats from apartments in purpose built mansion blocks with porters to smaller flats in converted buildings are also popular.

To stroll around Chelsea is to walk in the footsteps of kings and queens, writers and revolutionaries, politicians and painters, thinkers and thespians.

Noted in the doomsday book, Chelsea was a Middlesex village, when Thomas More a high-flying lawyer and recently engaged by Henry VIII, needed a new and sumptuous place to live, appropriate to his new position.

Chelsea quickly became the "village of palaces" as older ennobled families moved in, and the area's new reputation survived More's fall from grace in 1535. Henry himself built a manor house here which was to remain a royal favourite up to the Republic. The district was perfect, close to the centres of power but isolated from the frenzy of town by the swamps of the Five Fields - modern-day Belgravia.

Charles II perhaps more than any other set the seal on Chelsea's ascendancy, he set to enclose and make private an old farm track as the straightest route from Whitehall to Hampton Court Palace. Only bearers of a solid copper pass bearing the imprint of the monarch of the day could use what naturally became known as the King's Road. Not until 1830 were mere mortals allowed to travel on the highway.

With the opening of the old wooden Battersea Bridge in 1772 (so lovingly portrayed on various occasions by Whistler) Chelsea was prised open to the world, and the Embankment was created in 1874.

In the nineteenth century it retained its huge popularity with artists and writers - the Victorian roll call of literary and artistic giants who resided here was second to none in London. Elisabeth Gaskell was born here and George Eliot died here. Thomas and Jane Carlyle held court to a spellbound audience that included Dickens, Tennyson, Mazzini, Chopin, the Brownings and Darwin.

One of the new spectacular places of entertainment was Cremorne Gardens. It opened in 1843 on a 12 acre site in west Chelsea between the river and the King’s Road offering theatres, dancing, concerts, supper rooms, gardens, grottos, mazes and circus performers. But by far the most popular attraction was the balloon ascents. Unfortunately many residents complained of the noise and unruly behaviour of the visitors and Chelsea Vestry finally withdrew its licence in 1877, citing that Cremorne attracted ‘loose people’.

In 1887 J R Whitely opened an entertainment ground on derelict land between the railway lines at Earl’s Court. Annual exhibitions and ‘spectaculars’ such as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show were staged, attracting huge audiences. Permanent attractions included the Big Wheel, a helter-skelter and a water chute. The grounds closed in 1914 and were replaced in 1937 by the Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall. The Ideal Home Exhibition, The Motor Show, The Boat Show, the Royal Tournament and pop concerts are just a few of the events held here since the 1940s.

The main road by the river, Lots Road, recalls in its name the lots of ground that belonged to Chelsea Manor and the Lammas grazing rights the parishioners had.

In 1904 this part of town gained the Lots Road Power Station. Four 18,750 kilowatt turbines were built to power London Underground, a job it performed admirably until 2001 when the tube was hooked to the National Grid and the station site was turned over to redevelopment.

A stream once flowed into Chelsea Creek called Stanford Creek. It crossed Fulham Road at Stanford Bridge, which in time would mutate to Stamford and be the chosen term for an athletics stadium built by it in 1877. In 1904 the ownership of the ground changed and the site was offered to Fulham Football Club, who turned it down. The Mears brothers, intent on founding a new football club, leapt at the chance and Chelsea Football Club was born. Although it took fifty years to get any silverware in the trophy cabinet Chelsea have, since 1955, been regular cup winners. 1935 saw the record attendance at the Bridge, against London rivals Arsenal, of 82,905 people. Now that compulsory seating is the order of the day for every ground, it is a record that will stand.

Chelsea kept its boho beat until recent times. For hippies and punks it became a mecca - devotees of both counter-cultures flocked to the Kings Road to buy clothes at Nigel Weymouth's Granny Takes A Trip and Vivienne Westwood's Sex. Mick Jagger, like Keith Richards a resident of Cheyne Walk, sang of going "down to the Chelsea drugstore to get your prescription filled". But money speaks louder than art, and the artists have gone, replaced by the few who can afford to live here.

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