Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Carlyles would have had it - the historian's hat still hangs in the hall. Among the
artefacts are a letter from Disraeli offering a baronetcy and Carlyle's reply, refusing it.
The top floor contains the garret study where Carlyle tried in vain to escape the din of
the street and the neighbours' noisy roosters, in order to complete his final magnum
opus
on Frederick the Great.
Brompton Cemetery
210 Old Brompton Rd • Daily: summer 8am-8pm; winter 8am-4pm • Free • Guided tours May-Aug Sun 2pm; Sept-April every other Sun
• £5 donation requested •
T
020 7352 1201,
W
brompton-cemetery.org •
!
West Brompton
Brompton Cemetery
is the least overgrown of London's “Magnificent Seven” Victorian
graveyards. Laid out on a grid plan in 1840 and now overlooked by the east stand of
Chelsea Football Club, the cemetery's leafy central avenue leads south to an octagonal
chapel. Here, you'll find the grave of Frederick Leyland, president of the National
Telephone Company: designed by Edward Burne-Jones, it's a bizarre copper-green
jewel box on stilts, smothered with swirling wrought-ironwork. Before you reach the
chapel, eerie colonnaded catacombs, originally planned to extend the full length of the
cemetery, open out into the Great Circle, a forest of tilted crosses.
Few really famous corpses grace Brompton, but enthusiasts might like to seek out
Suffragette leader
Emmeline Pankhurst
; Henry Cole, the man behind the Great Exhibition
and the V&A; Fanny Brawne, the love of Keats' life; and John Snow, Queen Victoria's
anaesthetist, whose chloroform-fixes the monarch described as “soothing, quieting and
delightful beyond measure”.
Long Wolf
, a Sioux Indian chief, was a temporary resident
here, after he died while on tour entertaining the Victorian masses with Colonel “Buffalo
Bill” Cody. His body has since been returned to his descendants in America.
18
Fulham Palace
Bishop's Ave•
Palace
By guided tour only second and fourth Sun and third Tues at 2pm • £5
Museum
Mon-Wed, Sat & Sun 1-4pm •
Free •
T
020 7736 3233,
W
fulhampalace.org •
!
Putney Bridge
It's worth venturing as far as the New King's Road by Putney Bridge in order to visit
Fulham Palace
, in Bishop's Park. Once the largest moated site in England, it was the
residence of the Bishop of London from 704 to 1973. The oldest section of the
present-day complex is the modestly scaled Tudor courtyard, patterned with black
diamonds; the most recent is William Butterfield's neo-Gothic chapel, which, with
the other period interiors, can only be seen on the
guided tours
. You can also visit
the small
museum
which traces the building's complex history, and displays a few
archeological finds, including a mummified rat. In the palace grounds there's a lovely
walled herb garden, with a Tudor gateway and a maze of miniature box hedges, but
sadly no sign of the moat, which was filled in in 1921.
Battersea
Folk who want, but can't afford, to live in Chelsea have colonized the terraces and
mansions across the river in
Battersea
. For most of its history, however, Battersea was a
staunchly working-class enclave. In 1913 it elected the country's first black mayor, John
Richard Archer, and in the 1920s returned Shapurji Saklatvala as its MP - first for the
Labour Party, then as a Communist. Saklatvala was always in the news: he was banned
from entry into the US and even to his native India. He was also the first person to be
arrested during the 1926 General Strike, after a speech in Hyde Park urging soldiers
not to fire on striking workers, for which he received a two-month prison sentence.
Battersea Power Station
188 Kirtling St • Pop-Up Park open most weekends 10am-8pm •
W
batterseapowerstation.co.uk • Battersea Park train station
Physically, Battersea is dominated by the presence of
Battersea Power Station
, Giles
