CHAPTER V
Sir Hans Sloane—His houses and bequests—The gates of Beaufort House living in Piccadilly—The clock—The restoration of 1910—Church Lane—The Petyt House—Queen Elizabeth’s Cofferer—Church Lane and its residents—The Rectory—The King’s Theatre and the stocks—Upper Church Street and the Queen’s Elm.
THE tomb of Sir Hans Sloane is the chief object of interest in the little strip of churchyard which remains to the Old Church. It shows the urn and serpents of Esculapius, and its epitaph is pleasant reading; we fancy we see the courtly, kindly, pompous old physician who lived at Beaufort House and must have been a familiar figure on the riverside, pacing with dignity, or being carried in his chair to the Physic Garden which he presented to the Apothecaries Company and to Chelsea. His name has been repeated in a score of ways; throughout the district his daughters and co-heiresses, in their turn, have stood sponsor to many of our streets. Their marriages link the Past and Present with names that are, literally, part of Chelsea. Sir Hans, an Ulsterman by birth, first lived in Sir Thomas More’s “Great House,” which he caused to be pulled down—it had fallen into disrepair, and was overweighted by its grounds and expensive gardens.[1] He later removed to the Manor House, once Henry VIII.’s Palace, which occupied the space now filled by the houses of Cheyne Walk stretching westward from the corner of Oakley Street to Manor Street.
Sir Hans’ collection of natural curiosities and works of art formed the nucleus of the British Museum: he had wished that his rarities could have remained and have been exhibited in the Manor House itself, and that the adjoining gardens should be opened to the public, but this was found impracticable; the estate was divided and sold after Sir Hans’ death, and Cheyne Walk’s separate houses were built. Many of these show in their basements the solid remains of Tudor masonry.
Of the thousands who daily pass Devonshire House, Piccadilly, we wonder how many persons know the history of the great iron gates which adorn the Duke’s otherwise forbidding wall? They are the gateway designed by Inigo Jones for Beaufort House when occupied by the Earl of Middlesex. Sir Hans, when he demolished the Chancellor’s beautiful home, gave the gates to the Earl of Burlington and they were set up for a time at Chiswick; the late Duke of Devonshire recovered them, and set them up once more, in front of a great town house. Pope’s funny little verse to the gates, which he met on the road to Chiswick in an ignominious cart, is well known—
“O Gate, how cam’st thou hither?”
“I was brought from Chelsea last year
Battered by Wind and Weather!”
and often quoted, but few inquire whose gate it was and where it has gone to.
If time and space allowed, there are a hundred more points of interest about the Old Church over which we might linger, but it is impossible to do more than indicate its chief features in a guide-book of our present dimensions. Suffice to mention that the tower, replacing an earlier steeple, was built in 1679; that the clock, made and presented by Sir Hans Sloane’s gardener, a Quaker and amateur mechanic, is still keeping good time after more than 150 years’ work; that the new vestry is built as a memorial to Mr. Davies’ long incumbency.