Chelsea. Mitton Geraldine Edith
of the Asylum is supplied by a Parliamentary grant.
On Hamilton’s Survey the ground now occupied by the Duke of York’s School is marked “Glebe,” and exactly opposite to it, at the corner where what is now Cheltenham Terrace joins King’s Road, is a small house in an enclosure called “Robins’ Garden.” On this spot now stands Whitelands Training College for school-mistresses. “In 1839 the Rev. Wyatt Edgell gave £1,000 to the National Society to be the nucleus for a building fund, whenever the National Society could undertake to build a female training college.” But it was not until 1841 that the college for training school-mistresses was opened at Whitelands. In 1850 grants were made from the Education Department and several of the City Companies, and the necessary enlargements and improvements were set on foot. Some of the earlier students were very young, but in 1858 the age of admission was raised to eighteen. From time to time the buildings have been enlarged. Mr. Ruskin instituted in 1880 a May Day Festival, to be held annually, and as long as he lived, he himself presented to the May Queen a gold cross and chain, and distributed to her comrades some of his volumes. Mr. Ruskin also presented to the college many books, coins, and pictures, and proved himself a good friend. In the chapel there is a beautiful east window erected to the memory of Miss Gillott, one of the former governesses. The present Principal is the Rev. J. P. Faunthorpe, F.R.G.S.
On the west side is Walpole Street, so called from the fact that Sir Robert Walpole is supposed to have lodged in a house on this site before moving into Walpole House, now in the grounds of the Royal Hospital. Walpole Street leads us into St. Leonard’s Terrace, formerly Green’s Row, which runs along the north side of the great court known as Burton’s Court, treated in the account of the Hospital. In this terrace there is nothing calling for remark. Opening out of it, parallel to Walpole Street, runs the Royal Avenue, also connected with the Hospital. To the north, facing King’s Road, lies Wellington Square, named after the famous Wellington, whose brother was Rector of Chelsea (1805). The centre of the square is occupied by a double row of trees. St. Leonard’s Terrace ends in Smith Street, the southern part of which was formerly known as Ormond Row. The southern half is full of interest. Durham House, now occupied by Sir Bruce Maxwell Seton, stands on the site of Old Durham House, about which very little is known. It may have been the town residence of the Bishops of Durham, but tradition records it not. Part of the building was of long, narrow bricks two inches wide, thus differing from the present ones of two and a half inches; some of the same sort are still preserved in the wall of Sir Thomas More’s garden. This points to its having been of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period. Yet in Hamilton’s Survey it is not marked; instead, there is a house called “Ship House,” a tavern which is said to have been resorted to by the workmen building the Hospital. It is possible this is the same house which degenerated into a tavern, and then recovered its ancient name. Connected with this until quite recently there was a narrow passage between the houses in Paradise Row called Ship Alley, and supposed to have led from Gough House to Ship House. This was closed by the owner after a lawsuit about right of way.
A little to the north of Durham House was one of the numerous dwellings in Chelsea known as Manor House. It was the residence of the Steward of the Manor, and had great gardens reaching back as far as Flood Street, then Queen Street. This is marked in a map of 1838. This house was afterwards used as a consumption hospital, and formed the germ from which the Brompton Hospital sprang. On its site stands Durham Place. Below Durham Place is a little row of old houses, or, rather, cottages, with plaster fronts, and at the corner a large public-house known as the Chelsea Pensioner. On the site of this, the corner house, the local historian Faulkner lived. He was born in 1777, and wrote histories of Fulham, Hammersmith, Kensington, Brentford, Chiswick, and Ealing, besides his invaluable work on Chelsea. He is always accurate, always painstaking, and if his style is sometimes dry, his is, at all events, the groundwork and foundation on which all subsequent histories of Chelsea have been reared. Later on he moved into Smith Street, where he died in 1855. He is buried in the Brompton Road Cemetery.
The continuation of St. Leonard’s Terrace is Redesdale Street; we pass down this and up Radnor Street, into which the narrow little Smith Terrace opens out. Smith Street and Smith Terrace are named after their builder. Radnor House stood at the south-eastern corner of Flood Street, but the land owned by the Radnors gave its name to the adjacent street. At the northern corner of Radnor Street stands a small Welsh chapel built of brick. In the King’s Road, between Smith and Radnor Streets, formerly stood another manor-house. Down Shawfield Street we come back into Redesdale Street, out of which opens Tedworth Square. Robinson’s Street is a remnant of Robinson’s Lane, the former name of Flood Street, a corruption of “Robins his street,” from Mr. Robins, whose house is marked on Hamilton’s map. Christ Church is in Christchurch Street, and is built of brick in a modern style. It holds 1,000 people. The organ and the dark oak pulpit came from an old church at Queenhithe, and were presented by the late Bishop of London, and the carving on the latter is attributed to Grinling Gibbons. At the back of the church are National Schools. Christchurch Street, which opens into Queen’s Road West (old Paradise Row), was made by the demolition of some old houses fronting the Apothecaries’ Garden.
At the extreme corner of Flood Street and Queen’s Road West stood Radnor House, called by Hamilton “Lady Radnor’s House.” In 1660, when still only Lord Robartes, the future Earl of Radnor entertained Charles II. here to supper. Pepys, the indefatigable, has left it on record that he “found it to be the prettiest contrived house” that he ever saw. Lord Cheyne (Viscount Newhaven) married the Dowager Duchess of Radnor, who was at that time living in Radnor House. After the death of the first Earl, the family name is recorded as Roberts in the registers, an instance of the etymological carelessness of the time. In Radnor House was one of the pillared arcades fashionable in the Jacobean period, of which a specimen is still to be seen over the doorway of the dining-room in the Queen’s House. On the first floor was a remarkably fine fireplace, which has been transferred bodily to one of the modern houses in Cheyne Walk. At the back of Radnor House were large nursery-gardens known as “Mr. Watt’s gardens” from the time of Hamilton (1717) until far into the present century. An old hostel adjoining Radnor House was called the Duke’s Head, after the Duke of Cumberland, of whom a large oil-painting hung in the principal room.
From this corner to the west gates of the Hospital was formerly Paradise Row. Here lived the Duchess of Mazarin, sister to the famous Cardinal. She was married to the Duke de la Meilleraie, who adopted her name. It is said that Charles II. when in exile had wished to marry her, but was prevented by her brother, who saw at the time no prospect of a Stuart restoration. The Duchess, after four years of unhappy married life with the husband of her brother’s choice, fled to England. Charles, by this time restored to his throne, received her, and settled £4,000 on her from the secret service funds. She lived in Chelsea in Paradise Row. Tradition asserts very positively that the house was at one end of the row, but at which remains a disputed point. L’Estrange and others have inclined to the belief that it was at the east end, the last of a row of low creeper-covered houses still standing, fronted by gardens and high iron gates. The objection to this is that these are not the last houses in the line, but are followed by one or two of a different style.
The end of all, now a public-house, is on the site of Faulkner’s house, and it is probable that if the Duchess had lived there, he, coming after so comparatively short an interval, would have mentioned the fact; as it is, he never alludes to the exact locality. Even £4,000 a year was quite inadequate to keep up this lady’s extravagant style of living. The gaming at her house ran high; it is reported that the guests left money under their plates to pay for what they had eaten. St. Evremond, poet and man of the world, was frequently there, and he seems to have constituted himself “guide, philosopher, and friend” to the wayward lady. She was only fifty-two when she died in 1699, and the chief records of her life are found in St. Evremond’s writings. He, her faithful admirer to the end, was buried in Westminster Abbey.
A near neighbour of the Duchess’s was Mrs. Mary Astell, one of the early pioneers in the movement for the education for women. She published several volumes in defence of her sex, and proposed to found a ladies’ college. She gave up the project, however, when it was condemned by Bishop Burnet. She was ridiculed by the wits of her time – Swift, Steele, and Addison – but she was undoubtedly a very able woman.
The Duke of St. Albans, Nell Gwynne’s son, also had a