We starting outside South Kensington station at the Exhibition Road entrance. This area has a very French atmosphere mainly due to the proliferation of French organisations around these parts…
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We start off on the very non-descript Thurloe Place – named after John Thurloe, a secretary to the council of state during the Oliver Cromwell period of the Commonwealth.
This is the only traffic-filled section of the walk and the only part which can be described as Kensington rather than Chelsea. It’s a lot quieter after this and our walk will take us through an area which was even quieter. More of that later.
We turn right opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum into Thurloe Square. At number 33 Thurloe Square, Sir Henry Cole, the first director of the V&A lived. The building is now the Kazakhstan Embassy.
The Yalta Memorial Garden, which contains a memorial to those repatriated as a result of the Yalta Conference following World War II – Twelve Responses to Tragedy – is situated at the north of the square between the square and the Cromwell Road.
There’s a great view of the tracks of the District and Circle Lines from the road leading out of the square toward Pelham Street. We briefly join, and turn left into Pelham Street which originated in the 1830s.
At the next junction, opposite and standing on Fulham Road is Michelin House – opened in 1911 as the first permanent UK headquarters for the Michelin Tyre Company Ltd. It’s an example of late Modern Style, British Art Nouveau and early Art Deco. The building has three large stained-glass windows based on Michelin advertisements of the time.
Michelin moved out of the building in 1985 and it was purchased by restaurateur/retailer Sir Terence Conran and publisher Paul Hamlyn. They embarked on a major redevelopment and restoration project and in 1987 the building reopened.
Cross the road to reach Draycott Avenue, a notable and upmarket shopping street.
But let’s look along Walton Street as we pass the end, once the longest roads in the area and location of an amazing photo of health and safety gone mad in previous times.
Draycott Avenue was Blacklands Lane at the turn of the nineteenth century – still open land and mainly nursery gardens. The house halfway down Blacklands Lane was known as the Marlborough Tavern in 1794, with pleasure grounds laid out behind it. The area beside the house became a cricket ground in association with the tavern. We have a 1799 (Horwood’s) map of this here:
By 1828 most of Blacklands Lane was called Marlborough Road.
In 1836 a wide band along the east side of Marlborough Road was completely built up.
Mossop Street was once called by the wonderful title of Green Lettuce Lane.
Much of this area of Chelsea was formerly market gardens, owned by various wealthy landowners from around the country and this was a lane through the fields. In 1839 William Davies, a farmer, took over market gardens known as Green Lettuce Gardens.
Green Lettuce Lane – later Green Street and then Mossop Street – skirted Green Lettuce Gardens and the Marlborough Tavern’s cricket ground.
Walking along Mossop Street, we reach First Street on the left. It was so-named as it was the first street to be laid out on land belonging to the Rev. G.H. Hasker. There’s no Second Street – only First Street. Over London there were also a lot of Alpha Roads, Alpha Streets, Alpha Groves – also the first roads built on a particular estate.
Milner Street originally continued Green Lettuce Lane which, when this was open land, became a private road towards a house called The Pavilion. It was named after local landowner Mary Jane Milner after it was built up. We continue to walk down Milner Street.
St Simon Zelotes, a grade II listed church, was built in Milner Street during 1858–59. It was designed by the architect Joseph Peacock, and is his “most complete surviving work”.
We can look left down Lennox Gardens built in 1882 over the final remaining market garden in the area – Cattleugh’s nursery.
Building in the Queen Anne style took place over most of the Cadogan Estate after 1874. The red-brick style had forms and motifs borrowed from 17th-century Flemish town houses.
Further along Milner Street, turn right into Clabon Mews. This is a typical late Victorian mews. It was built over the Prince’s cricket ground which belonging to the Smith’s Charity Estate. It remained open land in 1865.
In 1874 the Cadogan and Hans Place Improvements Act was passed, which enabled new local development and the Smith’s cricket field made way for Clabon Mews.
At the end of the right angle, we turn right into Cadogan Square and then left into Cadogan Gardens.
Leading up to Sloane Street we’ll walk this road. Despite the age of the surrounding area, this street only dates from 1887. Lord Cadogan had offered to – in his words – improve some local streets and this part of the Cadogan Estate to the east was rebuilt under an agreement made between Cadogan and J.J. Wright in 1887.
Demolitions for higher-class modern houses involved sweeping away not only picturesque architecture, but also a large body of working-class inhabitants.
Some of those working classes lived in Pavilion Road which we can briefly explore. Pavilion Road is London’s longest mews.
After a 2015 consultation with the local community, the Cadogan Estate pledged to create a destination for independent, artisan traders. As a result, Pavilion Road has recently seen a complete transformation. The former Victorian stable blocks now host independent artisans and a number of restaurants and provides a sort of ‘village hub’ for Chelsea. That part to the right of Cadogan Gardens features this post-2015 development.
But, back in 1771, builder Henry Holland and his architect son, also called Henry, forward an ambitious scheme for 89 acres of fields which then belonged to the heirs of Sir Hans Sloane and was later part of the Cadogan estate.
Leases for houses on the west side of the new Sloane Street date from 1777. Some leases for houses in the mews behind Sloane Street (now Pavilion Road) date from 1788.
Henry Holland had reserved three acres to build a house for himself and which he occupied by 1789. It was initially called Sloane Place but later ’The Pavilion’, a reference to Holland’s work for the Prince of Wales at Brighton.
The mews leading up to it became called Pavilion Road. Occupants of the Pavilion Road mews were a social mix. An independent chapel was built in Pavilion Road during 1811.
Holland died there in The Pavilion in 1806, after which it was sold on to Peter Denys who himself died there in 1816. It was later subdivided, before being demolished in 1874. The site of the house is now occupied by Shafto Mews.
Returning to the walk along Cadogan Gardens, we now ‘dogs-leg’ over Sloane Street, turning right and then left into Wilbraham Place – we are temporarily off on a river hunt.
Wilbraham Place only dates from 1896 – the Cadogans did their trick of demolishing stuff and rebuilding in the Queen Anne style. We can see the back of the Cadogan Hall here and its former use as a Scientology Church
But its D’Oyley Street at the end we’re after. We have reached the route of the River Westbourne.
Along the course of the now-buried River Westbourne – which rises in the hills of Hampstead – lots of watery place names which are all derived from being beside this once important river.
It marked the boundary between Chelsea and Westminster and still does – west of the stream is the borough of Kensington and Chelsea and east of it is still Westminster.
The whole of the Westbourne river is now buried all the way. Even the Serpentine is now not actually part of the river water.
In the houses behind D’Oyley Street, there’s no public access to the course of the Westbourne here. No trace of it even – apart from those houses beyond the garden are in Westminster beyond the boundary which follows the course of the stream.
Around to the front of the Cadogan Hall and down Sedding Street with views down to Sloane Square itself.
Before we retrace our steps to Sloane Square, unexpectedly left here.
The bridge over the Westbourne here was called Blandel Bridge and it’s opposite Bourne Street.
Originally it was just a footbridge with a plank before a more substantial bridge, 16 feet wide and lined by high walls, was built in the reign of Charles II. There’s no sign of it nowadays.
Retrace your steps to the end of Sedding Street again and we’re at our destination – Sloane Square.