Chester Row, SW1W
Belgravia
Credit: GoArt/The Underground Map
Chester Row with its tall stucco houses lies at the heart of the district of Belgravia.

The street, dating from 1840, is so named because local landowners the Grosvenors also owned land near Chester.

The Grosvenor family came into ownership of the 200 acres which became Belgravia in 1677. That year Sir Thomas Grosvenor married Mary Davies, heiress to the Manor of Ebury. Ebury’s southern part was known as The Five Fields. It was a mixture of marshland, pasture, orchards, few scattered houses and reknowned as the haunt of highwaymen.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars ushered in a housing boom. After George IV moved into Buckingham House in 1826, it was decided that the Five Fields should be developed.

Robert, 1st Marquess of Westminster, engaged estate Surveyor Thomas Cundy and master builder Thomas Cubitt to produce an elegant estate of squares, streets and crescents.

Chester Row went by a series of other names in different parts of the street before being combined into one.


return to article