Old Chelsea, London, England

Bits of Old Chelsea (1894), etchings of houses of celebrities which featured in a book of this title by Walter Burgess with some other old Chelsea buildings added for good measure.

Pictured right: Madame Venturis house, Cheyne Walk

This house, number 4 Cheyne Walk was the home of the novelist George Eliot. She moved in there with her husband John Walter Cross. You might argue that Burgess was pushing his luck in this case. George Eliot (alias Marian Evans and Mary Ann Cross) only lived there for three weeks in December 1880. Her husband, who suffered from depression had thrown himself into a Venetian canal on their honeymoon but survived. Although both of them loved the house with its views of the river, Eliot became ill with a recurrence of a kidney condition she had suffered from for years and died before the year was out.

Cheyne Walk provided many subjects for Burgess. At number 59 was the house of W Holman Hunt'.

This was a slightly more modest residence further down Cheyne Walk, close to the Old Church. When Hunt became more famous he moved to Melbury Road in Kensington – from the early Chelsea haunts of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the more affluent neighbourhood of Lord Leighton.

By contrast that other famous member of the Brotherhood, Gabriel Rossetti moved to a big house at the other end of Cheyne Walk.

Number 16, also known as Queen House and Tudor House was the house Rossetti moved into in 1862 after the death of Elizabeth Siddall. Rossetti’s brother lived there for a while as did the poet Algernon Swinburne.

Apparently, according to Burgess’s collaborator Richard Le Gallienne (who wrote the text of Bits of Old Chelsea), Rossetti acquired, for his menagerie which included armadillos and wallabies, a zebu (an African species of cow) which had to be conveyed into the garden through the house tied up. It was tethered to a tree, a condition it disliked (or perhaps it never forgot its undignified entry into the property), and one day it managed to uproot the tree and charge at Rossetti who had to climb the garden wall to escape its vengeance. Rossetti never found a buyer and had to give it away although we don’t know to whom.

Whistler himself had several addresses in Chelsea. This is one of the Cheyne Walk ones:

This is another pencil drawing of number 6 Cheyne Walk, the house of Dr Dominceti.

Bartholomew Dominceti bought the house in 1766 and provided therapy with medicated steam baths. There were 30 sweating chambers in the garden and four fumigating bedchambers. Although he attracted many famous names to the house, Dr Johnson decried his work. He left the house encumbered with debt but was remembered by many.

Mr Burgess’s tour takes us away from the river now to Upper Cheyne Row, at the end of which stood the house that Dr Phene built. The the picture below, “the house where the coal man has just made his delivery” was the residence of the frequently impecunious journalist and poet Leigh Hunt.

Hunt was supposedly the model for Harold Skimpole in Dickens’s novel Bleak House. Although Hunt was recognisable to all his friends he seems to have remained on friendly terms with Dickens. He was also on good terms with a man who lived round the corner in Cheyne Row , someone who was definitely the greatest Chelsea celebrity of his day. Thomas Carlyle,historian, critic and “The Sage of Chelsea” lived in the house which is now a museum dedicated to him from 1834 (Hunt was at the door to welcome him and his wife Jane as they arrived by hansom cab) In his old age he took frequent solitary walks and has been depicted by other Chelsea artists such as Walter Greaves. This might be him in the view below:

Belle Vue House, on the right was the home not only of the poet and painter William Scott Bell, an early member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but also the birthplace of the novelis [thttp://www.geni.com/people/Elizabeth-Gaskell/6000000017945797735 Elizabeth Gaskell].

Bell bought the house later in his life. Unlike the other members of the Brotherhood, Bell was not championed by John Ruskin' but he retained the friendship of Rossetti.

Burgess also takes us to[ Joseph Mallord William Turner JMW Turner]’s house with this small sketch. Turner lived there incognito with his housekeeper Mrs Booth and died there in 1851.

The house of Thomas More was also long gone by the time Burgess was working but there may have been remants of it, such as this mulberry tree in the grounds of a Catholic seminary in Beaufort Street. A picturesque view in any case.

further about this from wikipedia:

The Great Hall is the only surviving part of the medieval mansion of Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate, in the City of London, which was built in 1466 by the wool merchant Sir John Crosby. By 1483, the Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III, had acquired the Bishopsgate property from the original owner's widow.[2] The Hall was used as one of his London homes.[2] It was used as the setting for a scene in William Shakespeare's Richard III.[3] In the reign of Henry VIII it belonged to Antonio Bonvisi.[4]

Following a fire in 1672 only the Great Hall and Parlour wing of the mansion survived, it then became a Presbyterian Meeting House, and then a warehouse with an inserted floor.[1]

In 1910, the mediaeval structure was reprieved from threatened demolition and moved stone by stone to its present site, provided by the former London County Council, largely at public expense. The neo-Tudor brick additions designed by Walter Godfrey were constructed around it. The salvage, catalogue and storage were paid for by the Bank of India, who had purchased the Bishopsgate site to build offices.[5]

Godfrey also added the north wing in 1925-6 as a women's university hall of residence. The site passed to the Greater London Council (GLC), who maintained it until 1986, when the GLC was abolished. The London Residuary Body, charged with disposing of the GLC's assets, put Crosby Hall up for sale.

Crosby Hall was bought in 1989 by Christopher Moran, a businessman who is the Chairman of Co-operation Ireland. Until then the site's frontage had been open to Cheyne Walk and the Thames river and its central garden was open to the public. Moran commissioned a scheme to close the frontage with a new building and convert the complex to a luxury mansion. The scheme caused considerable controversy, but was given permission after a Public Inquiry in December 1996, following two previous refusals by Kensington and Chelsea Council.

Notable residents at the original site:

Richard Duke of Gloucester 1483.[1]

Sir Thomas More 1523-4.[1]

William Roper, 1547.[1]

Sir Walter Raleigh 1601.[1]

Owned by the Earl of Northampton between 1609 and 1671,[1] and the residence of poet Mary Sidney from 1609 to 1615.

Headquarters of the East India Company 1621-38.[1]

Lindsey House was built in 1674 by the third Earl of Lindsey[3] on the riverside site of Thomas More's garden and is thought to be the oldest house in Kensington and Chelsea.[4] It was extensively remodelled in 1750 by Count Zinzendorf for the Moravian community in London.

The house was divided into four separate dwellings in 1775. Today, it occupies nos. 96 to 101 of Cheyne Walk, covering a number of separate frontages and outbuildings.[1] Previous residents have included the historical painter John Martin, in one of the outbuildings at 4 Lindsey Row from 1849–53 and James McNeill Whistler between 1866–78 at 2 Lindsey Row (now 96 Cheyne Walk).[5] In 1808, engineer Marc Brunel lived in the middle section of the house (now no. 98), and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel grew up here.[4] These residencies are commemorated by Blue plaques on the walls of the house.[1]
The house was separated from the river by the construction of the Chelsea Embankment, completed in 1874, as a part of Joseph Bazalgette's grand scheme to create a modern sewage system.

One part of the house features a garden designed by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll in 1911. This is a small garden of 50 feet (15.2 m) by 30 feet (9.1 m), laid to grass, two broad paths with two narrow paths on the boundary run the length of the garden around an ancient mulberry tree and lily pond. This area is surrounded by statuary, a colonnade and a single flower border. The garden is said by Lennox-Boyd be "modest in its elements, quietly restful in its effect" and "to respect the simple formality of the house".[3] In 2000, the garden was restored and a glazed garden room was added to the house by Marcus Beale Architects.[6]

Garden Corner

is a Grade II* listed house at 13 Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, London. It was built in 1879 in deep red brick in the Dutch Renaissance style by the architect Edward l'Anson Junior, on the site of the Old Swan pub.[1][2] James Staats Forbes, the Scottish railway engineer, railway administrator and art collector lived there until his death there in 1904.[3] In 1906–07, the interior was substantially redesigned in the Arts and Crafts style by the architect and designer Charles Voysey, for Emslie Horniman, Liberal MP for Chelsea, anthropologist and philanthropist.[1] According to British Listed Buildings, the interior is "widely regarded" as one of Voysey's finest interiors, both for the quality of its fixtures and fittings and for the ingenuity of its plan.[2] Voysey's work included lining Mrs. Horniman's second floor bedroom in oak, and ensuring that in fitting the bedstead, the writing table, the jewel-safe and the wardrobe, every inch of space was utilised. The cabinets next to the bed were fitted with sliding shelves, so that her morning teatray would be over the bed.[4] In the 1946 film Wanted for Murder, Garden Corner is home to Eric Portman and his mother Barbara Everest.[5] On 13 June 1946, it was opened as the residential Garden Corner Club, run by Lord Willoughby de Broke, Wing Commander William Herbert Wetton and another ex-RAF officer, with an emphasis on offering cars, yachts and aeroplanes for hire to members. It closed in 1949.[6][7] In September 1999, it was bought unmodernised by businessman Paul Gregg from a member of the Saudi royal family. However, despite extensive restoration, after buying a £7.5 million stake in Everton F.C., Gregg was spending most of his time in north-west England. The house was put up for sale in early 2002 for £8.5 million, but as of October 2004, the asking price had been reduced to £6.85 million.[8][9][10] In 2013, it was for sale for £17.95m freehold

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