Flood Street commemorates Luke Thomas Flood (d.1860) a major Chelsea land owner and a benefactor of the poor.
Flood Street runs between King’s Road to the north and Royal Hospital Road to the south. Originally it was Pound Lane and led to the Swan Inn, much frequented by Samuel Pepys.
The street was then called Robinson’s Lane, after Sir Ernest Robinson, the developer of Ranelagh Gardens in 1741, and later was Queen Street
The name Flood Street was coined in 1906.
On 30 March 1967, at Michael Coopers Photographic Studio at 1-11 Flood Street, the sleeve of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was put together.
A notable resident of 19 Flood Street was the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The house was bought by the Thatchers in 1967 and sold in 1986.
James Joyce (’Lord Haw Haw’), the Nazi propagandist, lived in Flood Street from 1928 to 1930 with his first wife Hazel and their small daughter.
