The Squares of Chelsea

Sloane Square tube station, London

Guided by

Short version. The Squares of Chelsea guided by the author of Square London.

Long version. Five squares. 500 delights. "Two hidden extensions…forming extremely quiet and secluded sub squares in the corners." No end of artists, writers, actors and composers. P.G. Wodehouse: "I'm living in horrible lodgings off the King's Road." Osbert Sitwell. Sybil Thorndike. Edna O'Brien. William Walton. David Frost. Jean Rhys. Dorothy George. A regicide. A Duke. One of the smallest houses in London. Italian garden. A raffish reputation made good – if being one of the most expensive and exclusive addresses in London is "made good." That fatal police siege. A dairyman and patent hothouse manufacturer. The church that was fatal to any social pretensions. The "unique" square – "no other square expresses so completely the pure conception of a single mind." Equivocal reputation (curious how that theme keeps coming up in SW3; all those mistresses, Booth in 1899 spelling it out: "many prostitutes here"). The King's Road and The King's English. Everything to like about this walk, not the least of which is the way it resists the gravitational pull of the Thames, the Royal Hospital, the Physic Garden and Cheyne Walk – shows you the other Chelsea, the Chelsea visitors, let alone most Londoners, never see.