Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
character of this peaceful haven has been lost. Novelist Henry James, who lived at no.
21, used to take “beguiling drives” in his wheelchair along the Embankment; today,
he'd be hospitalized in the process. An older contemporary of James, Mary Ann Evans
(better known under her pen name George Eliot), moved into no. 4 - the first blue
plaque you come to - in December 1880, five months after marrying an American
banker 21 years her junior. Three weeks later she died of a kidney disease. Composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams lived at no. 13; thirty or so years later, composers Mick Jagger
and Keith Richards followed suit, at no. 48 and no. 3 respectively.
18
Chelsea Old Church
64 Cheyne Walk • Tues-Thurs 2-4pm •
T
020 7795 1019,
W
chelseaoldchurch.org.uk • Bus #19 or #319 from
!
Sloane Square
At the end of Cheyne Walk's gardens, there's a garish, gilded statue of
Thomas More
,
“Scholar, Statesman, Saint”, a local who used to worship in nearby
Chelsea Old Church
where he built his own private chapel in the south aisle (the hinges for the big oak
doors are still visible). More is best known for his martyrdom in 1535, though he
himself showed little mercy to heretics - he even had some tied to a tree in his Chelsea
back garden and flogged. Badly bombed in the last war, the church nevertheless
contains an impressive number of monuments. Chief among them is Lady Cheyne's
memorial (possibly by Bellini) and More's simple canopied memorial to his first wife,
Jane, in which he himself hoped to be buried. In the event, his torso ended up in the
Tower of London, while his head was stuck on a pike on London Bridge, but later
saved and secretly buried in Canterbury by his adopted daughter, Margaret Roper.
More's second wife, Alice, is also buried here.
Crosby Hall
You can get a flavour of Chelsea in Thomas More's day from
Crosby Hall
, part of a
fifteenth-century wool merchant's house on Cheyne Walk once owned by More,
transferred in 1910 bit by bit from Bishopsgate in the City to the corner of Danvers
Street, west of Chelsea Old Church, on the site of More's gardens. Once occupied by the
future Richard III (and used as a setting by Shakespeare), it's now a private residence, so
you can admire its brick exterior, but not the great hall's fine hammerbeam roof.
Lindsey House and around
The continuation of
Cheyne Walk
, beyond Crosby Hall, is no less rich in cultural
associations. Mrs Gaskell was born in 1810 at no. 93, while the painter James Whistler,
who lived at ten different addresses in the 41 years he spent in Chelsea, lived for a time
at no. 96, the house where the Provisional IRA and the British government met secretly
in 1972, to discuss peace, some five months after Bloody Sunday. The Brunels, Marc
and Isambard, both lived at no. 99, which form part of
Lindsey House
, built in 1674
on the site of Thomas More's farm - it's occasionally possible to visit the entrance hall,
garden room and gardens (phone
T
020 7447 6605 for more details). Last but not
least, the reclusive J.M.W. Turner lived at no. 119 for the last six years of his life under
the pseudonym Booth, and painted many a sunset over the Thames.
Carlyle's House
24 Cheyne Row • April-Oct Wed-Sun 11am-5pm • NT • £5.10 •
T
020 7352 7087 • Bus #19 or #319 from
!
Sloane Square
Scottish historian
Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881) set up home here with his wife, Jane,
in 1834. Carlyle's full-blooded and colourful style of writing brought him great fame
during his lifetime - a statue was erected to the “Sage of Chelsea” on Cheyne Walk less
than a year after his death in 1881, and the house became a museum just fifteen years
later. That said, the intellectuals and artists who visited Carlyle - among them Dickens,
Tennyson, Chopin, Mazzini, Browning and Darwin - were attracted as much by the
wit of his strong-willed wife, with whom Carlyle enjoyed a famously tempestuous
relationship. The house itself is a typically dour Victorian abode, kept much as the
