Apologies for the long radio silence, my poor laptop has been away getting repaired. But now the sun is shining, it's a lovely day - and it's the weekend, which means it's time for another walkabout. What a beautiful day - my poor battered boots are taking a well-earned holiday and even my tatty black coat is staying at home. Today I've dug out my best stripey blazer and I'm off to Chelsea.
This isn't part of London I've visited much before but I'm sure it'll be a different world to my home in Acton. Today I'm going walkabout along one specific street. Cheyne Walk is an amazing road - a list of former residents is a veritable 'Who's Who' of 19th and 20th--century artists and literary giants, and some rather more modern celebrities have called it home too. Some of my favourite people from the past - from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Bram Stoker to Sylvia Pankhurst - have lived here, as have two Rolling Stones. This is going to be fun.
Normally I'd advise getting the tube to Sloane Square so you can walk straight down King's Road, but the District Line's being temperamental today so I took the Piccadilly Line to South Kensington instead. It's no further (about a 15 minute walk either way) and it's actually a very interesting walk, past some really beautiful houses. From South Ken I wandered, wide-eyed, past Onslow Square. Here, opulent houses with elegant white columns and ornamental balconies look out over a large park - or "private residents' garden", a sign on the gate informed me. All the streets are filled with trees covered in white blossom and it's just as pretty as you head towards the river, down Sidney St and Oakley St.
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| Beautiful house... with an impressive array of CCTV cameras... |
A short walk down another leafy stretch of road and you come out onto Chelsea Embankment - pre-1874 this was water, and the houses on Cheyne Walk fronted straight onto the river. Hence why it was such a fashionable place to live, I suppose.
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| Cheyne Walk, pre Chelsea Embankment |
Leaving this panoramic view of modernity behind, if you turn right and walk a short distance you'll come to Chelsea Old Church. Small, squarish and red brick, this is a compact little building with a surprisingly tall tower.
It's hard to imagine now, but once upon a time Chelsea was a little village - a ferry landing-spot before all the great bridges were built over the Thames. Centuries before Chelsea was swallowed up by London, the Old Church was its parish church.
It's a lovely church - originally built in the 12th century it was largely destroyed by German bombs in 1941 but it has been faithfully restored in the original style and a lot of its medieval features have been preserved.
The church is closely associated with the Tudor statesman Thomas More (who was beheaded after disagreeing with Henry VIII over the Break with Rome, wrote the philosophical work 'Utopia' and is considered a saint by the Catholic Church). More built his own private chapel here in 1528 and is also buried there - amazingly, his funerary monument survived the Blitz.
But he isn't the only famous name linked to this place; the church is rich in Tudor history. It is thought that Henry VIII secretly married his third wife Jane Seymour here before her official state ceremony and that both Lady Jane Grey and Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) worshipped at this church while they lived with Henry VIII's last wife Katherine Parr in her Chelsea manor. The 17th-century poet laureate Thomas Shadwell is also buried here.
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| Chelsea Old Church and Thomas More |
It's a lovely church - originally built in the 12th century it was largely destroyed by German bombs in 1941 but it has been faithfully restored in the original style and a lot of its medieval features have been preserved.
The church is closely associated with the Tudor statesman Thomas More (who was beheaded after disagreeing with Henry VIII over the Break with Rome, wrote the philosophical work 'Utopia' and is considered a saint by the Catholic Church). More built his own private chapel here in 1528 and is also buried there - amazingly, his funerary monument survived the Blitz.
But he isn't the only famous name linked to this place; the church is rich in Tudor history. It is thought that Henry VIII secretly married his third wife Jane Seymour here before her official state ceremony and that both Lady Jane Grey and Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) worshipped at this church while they lived with Henry VIII's last wife Katherine Parr in her Chelsea manor. The 17th-century poet laureate Thomas Shadwell is also buried here.
I found the church open so I wandered in for a look about. It's quite small inside, divided in three by the vaulted ceiling and dark wooden beams into the nave and two side chapels, and the overall impression is of simplicity; the altar is just a small table with two white candles and two urns of white roses, surrounded by a wooden rail. The organ is high up on a balcony supported by wooden pillars over the entrance. The walls are plain and white but have a very busy feel because they are crammed with sculpted plaques (most of them cracked from bomb damage - the gravestones paving the floor also have great jagged lines running through them where they have been put back together) and some elaborate wall tombs. One of these, to the Cheyne family, no less, was framed with two columns of red marble, containing a reclining white statue and taking up the whole height of the wall. The organist was practicing as I came in (evensong was due to begin in 75 minutes), but otherwise the church seemed empty, and his great rumbling chords filled the air.
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| Inside the church - Lawrence chapel on the left, More chapel on the right. |
In this chapel I found I wasn't alone after all - the verger, a quiet, elderly man, was sitting beside the Lawrence monument reading a broadsheet paper. He was more than happy to show me around the church and tell me a bit about its history - in fact, he was eager to point out some of his favourite plaques. He showed me one which read that a woman's 'glorious reward' for her spectacular piety was that she had borne 10 children - I wonder if she would have agreed with that? Pointing to another, which commemorated four men who had died 'in a squall on the Thames' he chuckled: "I've always found that one rather funny... I suppose it isn't really."
Other interesting features of the church include their collection of 'chained books' - which are pretty much what it says on the tin; a set of 17th and 18th-century tomes, bound in yellow-grey leather and enormous (the biggest was about 6" thick and almost 2ft high), chained inside a wooden case with black metal bars across the glass front. One of these was apparently quite famous; a 1717 'Vinegar Bible', so called because a careless typesetter rendered the title of Luke 20 ('The Parable of the Vineyard') as 'The Parable of the Vinegar'. Lovely stuff.
Lots of nice memorial plaques too - some fun 18th century ones with rhyming epitaphs and a clutch of 19th century ones which give you an interesting insight into the sorts of people who populated Chelsea's old parish. Among them there was an apothecary, a member of the East India Company and a Captain of the Royal Navy. Also, my nomination for the best name of this walkabout: Sydenham Teast Edwards, d.1819. Good effort, Sir!
The More chapel is to the right of the altar. It is decorated with a modern painting of the statesman Thomas but there are also some beautiful historical details; there is a lovely little brass engraving of a family praying together - a man and woman in 16th-century garb kneeling in front of a table with books. The woman is veiled and their five girls and six boys of various ages (one son is bearded like his father) kneel behind the parent of the same sex. Some bits of sculpted faces and fruit have also survived, decorating an arch, while the chapel also contains the remains of a monument to Jane Guildford, Duchess of Northumberland. This was the mother in law of the ill-fated (and short-lived) 'Nine Days Queen' Lady Jane Grey, as well as the mother of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester - a particular favourite of Elizabeth I.
Thomas More isn't buried in the More Chapel itself but round to the left, near the main altar. It took me a while to find him because his grave isn't obviously signposted – you have to look for a large recess with a big black plaque covered in a Latin inscription. Luckily my guide was more than happy to point it out for me. It's quite an impressive memorial – the plaque is probably 4ft by 4ft, set in a stone frame with coats of arms at each corner. You can see the damage it suffered during the Blitz – four big cracks run across the black stone, but it has been carefully put back together. The inscription summarises his life and career. I had fun trying to read the Latin because I'm a geek like that, but there's a translation to hand on a little wooden board if you're that way inclined.
Some of the other memorials around the altar are also worth a look. On the left-hand side there's a plaque to Sir Hans Sloane (d.1753), a physician, naturalist and founder of the British Museum, while near this is a lovely little monument to the Hungerford family from 1581 - a relief shows a family kneeling under a pillared arch (perhaps representing this church?), now yellow and faded but it looks like there was once some colour on the pillars.
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| Dacre monument |
One of my favourite plaques is from 1539 and lies in a deep niche near the altar. Full marks to John, Lord Bray for attention to detail – for whatever reason he felt the need to record not only the date but also the time (3pm) of his death. And why not?
But probably the most impressive monument belongs to Gregory Fiennes, Lord Dacre, and his wife Ann – it's a fantastic 16th-century construction behind green and gold metal railings. Gregory and Ann are depicted in stone, lying side by side, hands folded in prayer, in a deep wall recess. Gregory is bearded and dressed in armour while Ann looks every inch the Tudor lady in her cap and ruffed collar. Stone dogs lie at the feet of both statues. Over them rises a great arched canopy, decorated with roses, three big coats of arms and two obelisks, the whole thing framed by columns of marble. It's an amazing monument, painted in red, blue and yellow - now much faded, but it must have been an impressive sight when new.
Leaving the church, if you cross the road and walk across a small park called Petyt Place (past a sandpit containing a metal post labelled “dog's lavatory” - only in Chelsea!), you enter phase two of this walkabout; Cheyne Walk. Home to a bohemian colony of artists, writers and rock stars from the 19th century to the present day, it's a place to wander and let the imagination run wild.
On the way to Cheyne Walk you pass an imposing redbrick 17th-century house with tall, thin, octagonal chimneys and black diamond patterns on the walls. This is Crosby Hall. It belonged to a wealthy 15th-century wool merchant who rented it to Richard III as his London home. Shakespeare's play is set partly in this hall. This isn't its original location, though – after suffering terrible fire damage in the late 17th century and being threatened with demolition in the early 20th it was moved, brick by brick from Bishopsgate to here. What an undertaking! Quite odd to see what looks like it should be a National Trust property beside a busy Chelsea road, but there's no doubting it's an impressive sight. Above a huge wooden double door that wouldn't look out of place on a cathedral there is a great coat of arms topped with a helmet and supported by what I can only describe as 'mer-stags'. On either side there are pillars on which lions crouch on their hind legs, holding shields with the same coat of arms.
Passing this, walk right to the end of Cheyne Walk and then start working your way back towards the church. It's an interesting place if you know a bit about who lived there but like the other Chelsea streets I found it quite an unfriendly place. Many of the fences are made of black railings but there are boards behind them, keeping nosy eyes out. Lots of tall gates with intercom systems. That said, a very interesting place to wander. In all my walkabouts I have never come across a street with so many famous names associated with it as Cheyne Walk - here's a list of just a few of the individuals who were born, lived or died on this street:
Writers
- George Elliot (number 4)
- Bram Stoker (number 27)
- Algernon Charles Swinburne (16)
- Henry James (21)
- The great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (98)
- The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (number 13, where he composed his first three symphonies)
Artists
- J M W Turner (119)
- Whistler (21, 96 and 101)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (16)
Political figures
- The Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst (number 120)
- Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George (number 10)
Modern musicians
- Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful had a flat at number 48 from 1968-75
- Another Rolling Stone, Keith Richards, lived at number 3.
- Bryan Adams owns property on this road and Bob Marley composed 'I shot the Sheriff' in a one-bed flat just off Cheyne Walk in the 1970s.
Today I went for a wander to see how many of these houses you could actually see.
Pankhurst's house was the first I came to at number 120, and helpfully it has a blue plaque identifying it. Not all the houses do, so you have to keep an eye out for house numbers. The building itself is still lovely and old fashioned to look at, except the owners have painted the walls a rather alarming shade of fluorescent blue! The neighbouring house was pale pink. No accounting for taste, I guess...
Turner's house, number 119, didn't have a blue plaque but, more fittingly, a lovely slab of sculpted iron with a raised relief of a palette and brushes. Quite an attractive house – dark red brick, rather French-looking black grilles over the windows.
Moving on to Whistler's various homes – the cream-coloured five-storey townhouse at #101 with its beautifully manicured little garden didn't have any kind of blue plaque to mark it out, but #96 did. Quite hard to see #96 though, as it was behind a high brick wall and a tall black gate.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel lived at #98 but you can't see this house at all. It's surrounded by a very tall brick wall with a solid green door, not a gate. I think that's rather unsporting!
From Victoriana to modern day – at the next house on our list lived a rather more contemporary star. Number 48, a white, 2-storey building – very continental style, with a balcony surrounded by black railings and supported by metal pillars wound around with flowering vines – once held a flat where Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful lived for 7 years. One infamous night in 1969 they were raided by the Vice Squad at this address.
Further along the road, we find the home of a very famous author. At the end of a sweeping crescent of tall thin buildings lived Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula and whom probably have to thank for having the Twilight franchise inflicted on us. Shame, I really liked him when I was a teenager...
Number 21 was home to two famous names (though you wouldn't know to look at it, there being no plaque): the author Henry James and our friend Whistler (again). It's a tall building of dark brick, five stories, with a long covered walkway leading between the front door and the gate.
At number 16 the poet Swinburne and my second-favourite Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti made their home. Rossetti spent the last 20 years of his life at this address, where he reportedly kept a menagerie of exotic animals including a kangaroo, a gazelle, an armadillo and a wombat (though he was banned from keeping peacocks due to the noise)
David Lloyd George lived at number 10, a 6-storey redbrick building with huge windows – it's very grand!
A few doors down is number 4, home to George Eliot, which has a particularly impressive front gate. The neighbouring house in paler brick, number 3, belonged to Rolling Stone Keith Richards. You have to wonder how these two would have got on as neighbours if they had lived at the same time – I think quite well! Eliot was no stranger to scandals, what with her controversial religious views, her relationship with the philosopher George Henry Lewes, who was already in an open marriage, and her marriage to John Cross, 20 years her junior. Rock and Roll!
This brings you to the end of Cheyne Walk and the end of my walkabout. There are plenty of other things worth doing in Chelsea if you're in this neck of the woods - the Physic Garden is lovely and the Old Barracks is worth wandering by. And of course there's King's Rd - but they're rather too well-known to be 'hidden gems' so I'm not going to cover them in this blog - you'll have to go and see them yourself!
Until next time...
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