Old Chelsea: A Summer-Day's Stroll

by Benjamin Ellis Martin

“Then Chelsey’s meads o’erhear perfidious vows,
And the press’d grass defrauds the grazing cows.”

The low river shore, planted with lime and plane trees, is protected by a slight embankment: first built by the Romans on the banks above their walled town of London: improved later by the Norman conquerors; and kept in repair afterward either by landlord or by tenant, as might be decided in the incessant disputes between them, still shown on the parish records of that day. This little embankment is broken here and there by carved gateways, giving entrance to the grand houses; and by water staircases—called, in our print, Ranelagh, Bishop’s, Old Magpye, Beaufort Stairs—from which a few country lanes—such as Pound and Church Lanes and Cheyne Row—lead from the river front to the King’s Road. This road had been first a foot-path following the windings of the river a little inland—worn perhaps by the feet of the wandering tribes of Trinobantes—and had gradually enlarged itself as the country around became cultivated. It led from the village of Whitehall through the woods and fields, across the tidal swamps and the marsh lands west of Westminster—partly filled in by the great Cubitt with the earth dug out in the excavations of St. Katherine’s docks, early in this century: where now stretches graceful St. James’s Park, where now Belgravia is built so bravely—and so the road ran to the slopes of Chelsea, to the first good land close alongside the river which rose fairly above it.

Such was the secret of the speedy settlement of this secluded suburb. It was high and healthy, and had easy access to town by the safe, swift, silent highway of the river; when few cared to go by the land road, bad enough at its best, unsafe even in daylight by reason of the foot-pads; but at last made wide and smooth for his coach by Charles II., recently restored. He used it as the royal route to Hampton Palace, and called it the King’s Private Road. Even that exclusive name did not serve to make it safe; and long after Chelsea Hospital was built, a guard of its pensioners nightly patrolled, as an escort for honest travellers, from where Buckingham Palace now stands, across Bloody Bridge,—at the edge of present Pimlico,—and so away through the Five Fields, “where robbers lie in wait,” as the Tatler puts it. For Mr. Dick Steele often went by this road to Chelsea, where he had a little house somewhere near the river bank: whereto he was fond of taking “a friend to supper,” leaving word at home that he should not be able to return until the next morning, the roads being so unsafe by night! Sometimes his friend Addison was with him; sometimes the latter walked this way alone to his own home, at the farther end of Chelsea; and once on a moonlight night, he strolled out here with Colonel Esmond, as you may remember. A few years later, this same walk was frequently taken by Mr. Jonathan Swift, from Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall—where he used to leave his “best gown and periwig,” as he tells Stella—“and so to Chelsea, a little beyond the Church.” And still later, in December, 1754, Smollett was robbed of his watch and purse—there was but little in the latter, for he was then in poor case—as he went by coach from London to his residence out in Chelsea.

“King’s Road,” as we see it to-day, in dingy letters on the old brick or plaster-fronted houses, makes us almost look for the Merry Monarch—as history has mis-named one of her saddest figures—driving past, on his way to Hampton Court, in company with a bevy of those beauties who still lure our senses from out their canvasses on the walls of the old palace. We see, at intervals along the road, behind its rusty iron railings and flagged front-yard and old-time porch, a long low brick house,

. . . “whose ancient casements stare
Like sad, dim eyes, at the retreating years,”

as if weary of waiting for their owner to come home from the Dutch wars. Through narrow archways we catch glimpses of trees and of gardens. Turning down a rural lane we stroll into “The Vale,” and find a clump of cottages, covered with vines, grown about with greenery; flowers blow, cocks crow, an air of country unconcern covers the enclosure. The French gardeners who came here in crowds in 1685, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and set Chelsea all a-bloom with their nurseries, have left to their heirs but a diminished domain; yet although Butterfly Alley, sought by sauntering swells, has gone, King’s Road is still countrified by its florists: their famous wistarias grow on the Hospital walls and climb the houses of Cheyne Walk: you still find their fig-trees in private gardens, their vines on old-fashioned trellises: they make Chelsea streets all green and golden with their massed creepers through summer and through autumn. In unexpected corners you will stumble on a collection of cosy cottages, like Camera Square; there are a few rural nooks still left; here and there a woodland walk; and in dairies hid behind stone streets the cow is milked for you while you wait to drink the warm milk.

And on the river bank, although the old Roman and the old Norman wall and walk are replaced by the broad new Embankment and its smug gardens; although the insolent affectations of the Queen Anne mania stare stonily down on Cheyne Walk; all these have not been able to vulgarise this most delightful of promenades. Starting from Chelsea Barracks we can still walk under the old plane trees:—on our right the ancient Dutch-fronted houses, so prim, so secluded, so reserved; on our left the placid flow of the storied Thames, broadened here into Chelsea Reach:—to dingy, dear old Battersea Bridge, and so on to Sand’s End. At each end of our walk are the two small rivulets which bounded the old parish east and west; one is now arched over and flows unseen beneath the tread of busy feet; the other serves as a railway cutting and carries rattling trains: so the old-time memories of the place now either flow underground, or are modernised and become part of its daily life.