Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to the Chelsea Conservative Club, at no. 430. In 1975 they changed tack and renamed
the shop SEX, stocking it with proto-punk fetishist gear, with simulated burnt limbs in
the window. It became a magnet for the likes of John Lydon and John Simon Ritchie,
better known as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, and was renamed Seditionaries - the
rest, as they say, is history. Now known as World's End, the shop, with its landmark
backward-running clock, continues to flog Westwood's eccentric designer clothes.
Royal Hospital Chelsea
Royal Hospital Rd •
Grounds
Daily: May-Sept 10am-8pm; Oct-April 10am-4.30pm • Free
Great Hall & Chapel
Mon-Sat 11am-noon
& 2-4pm, Sun 2-4pm • Free
Museum
Mon-Fri 10am-noon & 2-4pm • Free
Guided tours
by appointment Mon-Fri 10am & 1.30pm •
£8 •
T
020 7881 5516,
W
chelsea-pensioners.co.uk •
!
Sloane Square
Among the most nattily attired of all those parading down the King's Road are the
scarlet- or navy-blue-clad Chelsea Pensioners, army veterans from the nearby
Royal
Hospital
founded by Charles II in 1682. Designed by Wren, the hospital's plain,
red-brick wings and grassy courtyards became a blueprint for institutional and
collegiate architecture across the Empire. On Founder's Day (May 29), the Pensioners,
wearing their traditional tricorn hats, festoon Grinling Gibbons' gilded statue of
Charles with oak leaves to commemorate the day after the disastrous 1651 Battle of
Worcester, when the future king hid in an oak tree to escape his pursuers.
The public are welcome to visit the hospital's austere
Chapel
, with its huge barrel
vaulting and Sebastiano Ricci's colourful apse fresco
Resurrection
, in which Jesus
patriotically bears the flag of St George. Opposite lies the equally grand, wood-panelled
Great Hall
, where the three hundred or so Pensioners still eat under portraits of the
sovereigns and Antonio Verrio's vast allegorical mural of Charles II and his hospital. In
the Secretary's O
ce, designed by John Soane, on the east side of the hospital, there's a
small
Museum
(Mon-Fri only), displaying Pensioners' uniforms, medals and two
German bombs. The playing fields to the south, from which you get the finest view of
the hospital, are the venue for the annual
Chelsea Flower Show
(see p.25).
18
National Army Museum
Royal Hospital Rd • Daily 10am-5.30pm • Free •
T
020 7730 0717,
W
nam.ac.uk •
!
Sloane Square
The concrete bunker next door to the Royal Hospital houses the
National Army
Museum.
There are plenty of interesting historical artefacts, plus an impressive array of
uniforms and medals, but for a more balanced view of war, you're better off visiting the
Imperial War Museum.
To follow the museum chronologically, start with
The Making of Britain
(1642-1783),
which concentrates on the Civil War and the origins of the professional British Army,
LONDON'S PLEASURE GARDENS
“…the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees, and the loose
tribe of people that walked under their shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan
paradise.”
The Spectator,
May 20, 1712
London's pleasure gardens were among the city's chief entertainments in the eighteenth
century.
Vauxhall Gardens
, open from around 1660, on the south bank, provided the
blueprint: formal, lantern-lit gardens, musical entertainments and “dark walks”, perfect for secret
assignations. Of Vauxhall, there is now no trace, but its nearest rival was
Ranelagh Gardens
,
now a pleasant little landscaped park near the Royal Hospital. A couple of information panels
in the gardens' Soane-designed shelter show what the place used to look like when Canaletto
painted it in 1751. The main feature was a giant Rotunda, where the beau monde could
promenade to musical accompaniment - the 8-year-old Mozart played here. Shortly after it
opened in 1742, Walpole reported that “you can't set your foot without treading on a Prince or
Duke”. Fashion is fickle, though, and the rotunda was eventually demolished in 1805.
