Early history The word
Chelsea (also formerly
Chelceth,
Chelchith, or
Chelsey,) originates from the Old English term for "landing place [on the river] for chalk or limestone" (
Cealc-hyð:
chalk-
wharf, in
Anglo-Saxon). Chelsea hosted the
Synod of Chelsea in 787 AD. The first record of the
Manor of Chelsea precedes the
Domesday Book and records the fact that Thurstan, governor of the King's Palace during the reign of
Edward the Confessor (1042–1066), gave the land to the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. From at least this time, up to 1900, the Manor and Parish of Chelsea included a exclave which is now known as
Kensal Town. The exclave, which was once heavily wooded, was sometimes also known as
Chelsea-in-the-Wilderness. Abbot Gervace subsequently assigned the manor to his mother, and it passed into private ownership. By 1086 the Domesday Book records that Chelsea was in the
hundred of
Ossulstone in
Middlesex, with
Edward of Salisbury as tenant-in-chief.
King Henry VIII acquired the manor of Chelsea from
Lord Sandys in 1536;
Chelsea Manor Street is still extant. Two of King Henry's
wives,
Catherine Parr and
Anne of Cleves, lived in the Manor House; Princess Elizabeth – the future
Queen Elizabeth I – resided there; and
Thomas More lived more or less next door at
Beaufort House. In 1609
James I established a theological college,
"King James's College at Chelsey" on the site of the future
Royal Hospital Chelsea, which
Charles II founded in 1682. By 1694, Chelsea – always a popular location for the wealthy, and once described as "a village of palaces" – had a population of 3,000. Even so, Chelsea remained rural and served London to the east as a
market garden, a trade that continued until the 19th-century development boom which caused the final absorption of the district into the metropolis. The street crossing that was known as
Little Chelsea, Park Walk, linked Fulham Road to King's Road and continued to the Thames and local ferry down Lover's Lane, renamed "Milmans Street" in the 18th century. on the grounds of the
Royal Hospital Chelsea|alt=
King's Road, named for Charles II, recalls the King's private road from
St James's Palace to
Fulham, which was maintained until the reign of
George IV. One of the more important buildings in King's Road, the former
Chelsea Town Hall, popularly known as "Chelsea Old Town hall" – a fine
neo-classical building – contains important
frescoes. Part of the building contains the Chelsea Public Library. Almost opposite stands the former
Odeon Cinema, now
Habitat, with its iconic façade which carries high upon it a large sculptured medallion of the now almost-forgotten
William Friese-Greene, who claimed to have invented celluloid film and cameras in the 1880s before any subsequent patents. with
Chelsea Old Church in the background (2006) The memorials in the churchyard of
Chelsea Old Church, near the river, illustrate much of the history of Chelsea. These include
Lord and
Lady Dacre (1594/1595);
Lady Jane Cheyne (1698);
Francis Thomas, "director of the china porcelain manufactory";
Sir Hans Sloane (1753);
Thomas Shadwell,
Poet Laureate (1692). The intended tomb
Sir Thomas More erected for himself and his wives can also be found there, though More is not in fact buried here. In 1718, the Raw Silk Company was established in
Chelsea Park, with mulberry trees and a hothouse for raising silkworms. At its height in 1723, it supplied silk to
Caroline of Ansbach, then Princess of Wales. Chelsea once had a reputation for the manufacture of
Chelsea buns, made from a long strip of sweet dough tightly coiled, with currants trapped between the layers, and topped with sugar. The
Chelsea Bun House sold these during the 18th century and was patronised by the
Georgian royalty. At Easter, great crowds would assemble on the open spaces of the Five Fields – subsequently developed as
Belgravia. The Bun House would then do a great trade in hot cross buns and sold about quarter of a million on its final Good Friday in 1839. The area was also famous for its "Chelsea China" ware, though the works, the
Chelsea porcelain factory – thought to be the first workshop to make
porcelain in England – were sold in 1769, and moved to
Derby. Examples of the original Chelsea ware fetch high values. The best-known building is
Chelsea Royal Hospital for old soldiers, set up by Charles II (supposedly on the suggestion of
Nell Gwynne), and opened in 1694. The beautifully proportioned building by
Christopher Wren stands in extensive grounds, where the Chelsea Flower show is held annually. The former
Duke of York's Barracks (built 1801–3) off King's Road is now part of Duke of York Square, a redevelopment including shops and cafes and the site of a weekly "farmers' market". The Saatchi Gallery opened in the main building in 2008.
Chelsea Barracks, at the end of Lower Sloane Street, was also in use until recently, primarily by ceremonial troops of the
Household Division. Situated on the Westminster side of Chelsea Bridge Road, it was bought for re-development by a property group from
Qatar. from the south bank
St Mark's College, Chelsea, was founded in 1841, based on the beliefs of The Reverend
Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, its first principal: that its primary purpose was to widen the educational horizons of its students. During the
First World War, St Mark's College was requisitioned by the
War Office to create the 2nd London General Hospital, a facility for the
Royal Army Medical Corps to treat military casualties. It merged with St John's College, Battersea, in 1923, establishing a single institution in Chelsea as the College of St Mark & St John. In 1973 it moved to Plymouth, having outgrown the Chelsea campus. The former chapel of St Mark's College, designed by
Edward Blore is on the Fulham Road, Chelsea, and is now a private residence. Dring the mid-1800s,
Cremorne Gardens, London, was a popular
pleasure gardens area established in 1845. It continued to operate until 1877. The area lay between Chelsea Harbour and the end of the King's Road. Chelsea's modern reputation as a centre of innovation and influence originated in a period during the 19th century, when the area became a Victorian artists' colony (
see Borough of artists below). It became prominent once again as one of the centres of the "
Swinging London" of the 1960s, when house prices were lower than in the staid
Royal Borough of Kensington.
The borough of artists Chelsea once had a reputation as London's
bohemian quarter, the haunt of artists, radicals, painters and poets. Little of this seems to survive now – the comfortable squares off King's Road are homes to, amongst others, investment bankers and film stars. The
Chelsea Arts Club continues
in situ; however, the
Chelsea College of Art and Design, founded in 1895 as the Chelsea School of Art, moved from
Manresa Road to Pimlico in 2005. The Chelsea Book Club, at no. 65 Cheyne Walk (Lombard Terrace), a bookshop that also presented exhibitions and lectures, held the first exhibition of African art in London (sculpture from
Ivory Coast and Congo) in 1920, and was the first bookshop to stock Joyce's
Ulysses in 1922. Sold in 1928 owing to financial problems, it became the Lombard Restaurant. 's house on
Tite Street, Chelsea on Cheyne Walk. Parts of this building date back to the time of
Richard III, its first owner. But it is not native to Chelsea – it is a survivor of the
Great Fire of London. It was shipped brick by brick from
Bishopsgate in 1910 after being threatened with demolition. (January 2006) Its reputation stems from a period in the 19th century when it became a sort of Victorian artists' colony: painters such as
James Webb,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
J. M. W. Turner,
James McNeill Whistler,
William Holman Hunt, and
John Singer Sargent all lived and worked here. There was a particularly large concentration of artists in the area around
Cheyne Walk and
Cheyne Row, where the
Pre-Raphaelite movement had its heart. The artist
Prunella Clough was born in Chelsea in 1919. The architect
John Samuel Phene lived at No. 2 Upper Cheyne Row between 1903 and his death in 1912. He installed numerous artefacts and
objets d'art around the house and gardens and it was known locally as the "Gingerbread Castle". It was demolished in 1924. Chelsea was also home to writers such as
George Meredith,
Algernon Charles Swinburne,
Leigh Hunt and
Thomas Carlyle.
Jonathan Swift lived in Church Lane,
Richard Steele and
Tobias Smollett in Monmouth House. Carlyle lived for 47 years at No. 5 (now 24)
Cheyne Row. After his death, the house was bought and turned into a shrine and literary museum by the Carlyle Memorial Trust, a group formed by
Leslie Stephen, father of
Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf set her 1919 novel
Night and Day in Chelsea, where Mrs. Hilbery has a Cheyne Walk home. In a book,
Bohemia in London by
Arthur Ransome which is a partly fictional account of his early years in London, published in 1907 when he was 23, there are some fascinating, rather over-romanticised accounts of bohemian goings-on in the quarter. The American artist
Pamela Colman Smith, the designer of
A. E. Waite's
Tarot card pack and a member of the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, features as "Gypsy" in the chapter "A Chelsea Evening". A central part of Chelsea's artistic and cultural life was Chelsea Public Library, originally situated in Manresa Road. Its longest-serving member of staff was Armitage Denton, who joined in 1896 at the age of 22, and he remained there until his retirement in 1939; he was appointed Chief Librarian in 1929. In 1980, the building was purchased by
Chelsea College of Art and Design. The
Chelsea Society, formed in 1927, remains an active amenity society concerned with preserving and advising on changes in Chelsea's built environment. Chelsea Village and
Chelsea Harbour are new developments outside of Chelsea itself.
Swinging Chelsea Chelsea shone again, brightly but briefly, in the 1960s
Swinging London period and the early 1970s. The
Swinging Sixties was defined on King's Road, which runs the length of the area. The Western end of Chelsea featured boutiques
Granny Takes a Trip and The Sweet Shop, the latter of which sold medieval silk velvet caftans, tabards and floor cushions, with many of the cultural cognoscenti of the time being customers, including
Twiggy and many others. The "Chelsea girl" was a symbol, media critic
John Crosby wrote, of what "men [found] utterly captivating", flaunting a life is fabulous' philosophy". Chelsea at this time was home to
the Beatles and to
Rolling Stones members
Brian Jones,
Mick Jagger, and
Keith Richards. In the 1970s, the
World's End area of King's Road was home to Malcolm McLaren and
Vivienne Westwood's boutique "
SEX" (at Number 430, the King's Road), and saw the birth of the British
punk movement.
1974 bombings On 27 November 1974, the London unit of the
Provisional Irish Republican Army exploded
twin bombs on Tite Street, injuring 20 people.
Administrative history Chelsea Manor was served by the
ancient parish of Chelsea. (Such parish units were typically in place by the end of the twelfth century with their boundaries, based on those of the constituent manor or manors, rarely if ever changing.) The manor and parish formed part of the
Ossulstone Hundred of the county of
Middlesex. is shown. The area covered by the civil parish became the
Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea in 1900, part of a new
County of London. At that time, the
exclave of
Kensal Town, which had been part of Chelsea since at least the time of the 11th-century Saxon King
Edward the Confessor, was removed from Chelsea and divided between the new boroughs of
Kensington and
Paddington (each of which was otherwise based on its corresponding ancient parish). The
parliamentary constituency of Chelsea, which was identical to the parish, retained Kensal Town until 1918. In 1965 the area merged with the
Metropolitan Borough of Kensington to form the modern
London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. ==Geography==