Area Description
It has now come into its own, its southern half seeing a total makeover.
Chelsea Harbour was rebuilt in the late Eighties and, next door,
Lots Road Power Station has been made redundant and awaits its own transformation.
Although this little postcode filters huge amounts of traffic from the river to and from West London it is also the place to be for restaurant lovers, and in Brompton Cemetery it has the largest piece of open land between Hyde Park and riverside Fulham.
The redevelopment of Lots Road Power Station will restore access to the river in these parts.
Housing
There is a great housing contrast in SW10. Relentless change in the south has been accompanied by great stability in the north. The famous centrepiece in the north is
The Boltons, instantly recognisable on the A-Z by its oval gardens within the square. While it may have the grandest mansions in the neighbourhood the surrounding streets are no less in demand.
Multi-bedroomed stucco villas are the order of the day here. A few are still linked to the mews that once served them and surprisingly few have fallen into flat conversions. The prices are astronomic in this leafy and quiet enclave.
Some relief from this wall of blinding white facades comes in the form of the pastel terraces on Priory Walk and the brick cottages on Cresswell Place. Seymour Walk has the oldest housing in the area, with a terrace from 1797.
Bordering all this to the west is the commercial street of Hollywood Road and the traffic arteries of Redcliffe Gardens and Finborough Road. All sorts of housing can be found packed between them, from a new gated mews area to white cottages, from brick & stucco flats to private cul-de-sacs.
Chelsea & Westminster Hospital dominates things to the south. This square grid of housing between Fulham Road and Kings Road is known as the Ten Acre Estate and features popular four-storey mid-Victorian creations, uniform in their brick & stucco terraces.
Crossing over Kings Road we come to two ex-local authority estates: Cremorne and Worlds End. To the south are the sixty or so houseboats moored off Cheyne Walk.
Some older flats lie to the west of the estates in the form of Victorian mansion blocks in among Victorian terraced housing. The old Chelsea College site hereabouts has 300 homes placed in old and new buildings within the campus.
Lots Road is the dominant thoroughfare here, still holding out against the housing tide with its commercial flavour. Off it is Westgate Close, a new road carved out of an old ambulance station to provide 56 homes with four shops.
And here is Lots Road Power Station. This was the building which kept London Underground powered from 1904 to 2001 - the wharves for its coal supplies became the nearby marina - and which was sold when the tube got hooked up to the National Grid.
The final fate of this site is being hotly debated between builders, local authorities and natives, but whatever emerges will be big.
This is a £500m affair over 9 acres and, as with other conversions in the area, will increase the local population and place added strain on local infrastructures.
Next door in SW6 are the old gasworks of Imperial Wharf, undergoing the same treatment.
The southernmost tip of SW10 is Chelsea Harbour, redeveloped in the late Eighties. This 16½ acre site was transformed into a secure gated community, 300 homes in flats, terraces and crescents and mixed in with restaurants, a hotel, a health club and office space. The marina is the perfect centrepiece for it all.
Facilities
This is the spiritual home of London's diners. More
restaurants congregate in this tiny postcode than anywhere else in the capital, and the quality and range of food available in this border territory between Chelsea and Fulham would grace any city in the world.
Many naturally are to be found on the main thoroughfares that run through SW10 but plenty can be found on the rapidly-changing scene around the old Lots Road Power Station and the revamped Chelsea Harbour scheme next door. The following cuisines can be found on the following streets.
For Indian head to Kings Road, Stadium Street, Fulham Road and Cheyne Walk. For Thai head to Langton Street, Fulham Road, Hollywood Road, Lots Road and Park Walk.
Italian restaurants can be found on Fulham Road, Hollywood Road, Cheyne Walk, Langton Street and Kings Road. British delights are to be found on Fulham Road, Lots Road and Limerston Street.
A Spanish and an African restaurant can be found on Fulham Road while the French make appearances at Park Walk, Ifield Road and Hollywood Road.
Russian culinary embassies are located on Ifield Road and Kings Road and Chinese eateries appear on Kings Road, Fulham Road and Lots Road.
The Japanese can be found on Fulham Road while the Lebanese turn in an appearance at World's End Corner. Mediterranean fare can be discovered at Chelsea Harbour while seafood fans can find an appropriate outlet on Fulham Road.
Gastro pubs can be found on Ifield Road, Burnaby Street and Lots Road, while there is an American restaurant on Fulham Road.
But fine dining is not the only pastime this place can offer. There are many private art galleries crammed into this small slice of London in which to feast yout eyes, if not your wallet.
The more physically active should get themselves to Gilston Road, where the Budokwai resides. This is the oldest judo club in Europe, founded in 1918, and now expanded to offer aikido, karate and ju-jitsu.
Theatre lovers will find two excellent fringe venues. These are the Finborough Theatre, in the pub and on the road of the same name, and the Chelsea Theatre at World's End Place.
Kensington & Chelsea College, offering courses for adults, have two of their campuses within SW10. Hortensia Road deals in art studios and computer suites, while Park Walk Centre's speciality is sculpture.
Aspiring artists and the country's growing army of would-be interior designers can also get themselves down to Chelsea Harbour Design Centre, open Monday to Friday.
The Centre with its eighty showrooms bills itself as "the permanent European trade centre for the Interior Design industry specialising in fabrics, furniture, lighting, wall coverings, kitchens, bathrooms and bathroom accessories, floor coverings, carpets, rugs and decorative accessories."
Many prestigious organisations have chosen to have their headquarters in SW10, such as Bonhams Auctioneers, The Ecologist magazine, the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the Society of Authors.
Dead centre of SW10 is the world-class Chelsea & Westminster Hospital. Built in 1993, an impressive building graced with modern art, it offers all sorts, including A&E, a women and children's service, a day unit, plastic surgery, dermatological services, community midwives and paediatric teams. There is also a health centre at World's End.
Nearby, also on Fulham Road, is Chelsea Complementary Clinic. This is the spot to head to for treatments in the likes of osteopathy, naturopathy, reiki and reflexology.
The West Chelsea Playspace Group, incorporating an adventure playground and a youth club, can be found on Tetcott Road. The Ashburnham Community Centre is also here.
SW10 has one large tract of open land. This is Brompton Cemetery, some 44 acres playing host to around 200,000 people. Full of the great, the good and the not-so-good, it has slowly become a wildlife refuge in the heart of London.
The Friends of Brompton Cemetery organise regular guided tours, including some round the famous catacombs. There is also the tiny Cremorne Gardens by the Thames.
Big changes have been seen at the other end of SW10, by the river. The 9-acre site of Lots Road Power station, rendered redundant by London Underground being hooked up to the national grid, is under way for redevelopment to the tune of £500m. For the first time in a century there will be pedestrian access to the river by Chelsea Creek.
This follows from the late 1980s reworking of Chelsea Harbour, 16½ acres of prime riverside land which now encompass residential and commercial elements around the marina.
Finally, although just over the border in SW6, is Chelsea Football Club. The ground, by Brompton Cemetery, has a capacity of 42,449, although one game in 1935 saw a record crowd of 83,000.
Although respectable performers for the first 50 years of their history, since 1955 they have been in the front rank of English football apart from a brush with bankruptcy in the late Seventies.
The 12½ acre site now has not just the largest stadium in London but in Chelsea Village all the regular accoutrements of a top flight sporting side: two hotels, five restaurants, conference facilities, a nightclub, a health club and a business centre.
Transport
SW10 has the unenviable job of filtering riverside traffic into north London. Confusingly both roads are called the
A3220, as both are one-way roads (Finborough Road and Redcliffe Gardens). Cutting across them, heading west-east, are three major roads. These are Old Brompton Road (
A3218), Fulham Road (
A308) and Kings Road (
A3217).
The new communities springing up by the river here over old commercial areas are crying out for a new train station along the Clapham Junction - West Brompton railway line. Until one appears, it's a trek to buses on Fulham Road or Cheyne Walk.
And buses there are aplenty on the main roads here, especially Fulham Road, Kings Road and Old Brompton Road. West Brompton has gained a new train station, alongside the tube, that puts it on the line between Clapham and Willesden Junctions.
West Brompton Underground station is on the District Line (Wimbledon branch from Earl's Court) and can be found at the western tip of SW10. Fulham Broadway is on the same line, close by Chelsea Football Ground in SW6.
Steve Roberts
History
Some of London's more enduring landmarks crop up in West Brompton. The main road by the river, Lots Road, recalls in its name the lots of ground that belonged to Chelsea Manor and the Lammas grazing rights the parishioners had.
The area had a violent reputation well into the 19th century, quite unlike the sedate development of the 1850s and 60s around the Boltons and Redcliffe Square to the north.
In 1904 this part of town gained the Lots Road Power Station. Work began on this monolith in 1902. The engineers were forced to turn to Germany for the steel in the building and had to thus acquaint themselves with a unit of measurement they hadn't seen before - the millimetre.
Four 18,750 kilowatt turbines were built to power London Underground, a job it performed admirably until 2001 when the tube was hooked to the National Grid and the station site was turned over to redevelopment.
A stream once flowed into Chelsea Creek called Stanford Creek. It crossed Fulham Road at Stanford Bridge, which in time would mutate to Stamford and be the chosen term for an athletics stadium built by it in 1877.
In 1904 the ownership of the ground changed and the site was offered to Fulham Football Club, who turned it down. The Mears brothers, intent on founding a new football club, leapt at the chance and Chelsea Football Club was born.
A stand was erected on the east side of the ground but the other three sides were made up of spoil gained from the excavation of the nearby underground railway to create a perfectly raked seating area for the rest of the spectators.
On 2nd September 1905 the team played its first match, away against Stockport. Although it took fifty years to get any silverware in the trophy cabinet Chelsea have, since 1955, been regular cup winners.
1935 saw the record attendance at the Bridge, against London rivals Arsenal, of 82,905 people. Now that compulsory seating is the order of the day for every ground, it is a record that will stand.
Stamford Bridge overlooks Brompton Cemetery, founded in 1837. Taking up 44 acres of land, it is the best-kept of the capital's vast burial grounds and notable for the unfinished catacombs that were intended to run the whole length of the site and the tilted crosses of the Great Circle.
Famous souls to end their days here include Emmeline Pankhurst (1928), Henry Cole, the man behind the Great Exhibition (1882), George Borrow (1881), Richard Tauber (1948) and John Snow (1858), an anaesthetist whose chloroform fixes were described by Queen Victoria as "soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure".
In 1892 an Oglala Sioux Chief died in London and found a temporary home here. This was Lone Wolf, who succumbed to pneumonia but not before declaring his wish to have his body taken home. His widow made the understandable decision not to comply, as his great-grandson Black Feather explained:
"Back then, they had burials at sea. They did ask his wife if she wanted to take him home and she figured that as soon as they hit the water they would throw him overboard, so that's why they left him here." Lone Wolf finally went home in 1997.
Steve Roberts.
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