Chelsea Conservation Area

This area is in two separate parts, and it exists in its present form because three earlier conservation areas, Milner, Markham and St Luke's, were amalgamated and extended in 1983. The appraisal was adopted in January 2016.

The land was Chelsea Common and the pasture around it, open fields into the 1700s, with the King's Road long an infamous haunt of robbers and therefore closed in 1719 to all but the privileged few. The earliest residential building lease on the common was granted in 1790 to the Honourable George Cadogan, and development moved quickly after that. Jubilee Place was named in 1809 for George III's golden jubilee. St Luke's Church went up between 1820 and 1824 to James Savage's design, at a cost recorded to the shilling: thirty four thousand seven hundred and sixteen pounds, fourteen shillings and threepence.

Two celebrated nurseries were built over, Davey's and Colville's, the latter credited with the first real display of the garden chrysanthemum and running thirty to forty thousand square feet of glass on a two and a half acre site.

What was built is modest in scale and consistent in material: buildings of two to six storeys, predominantly formal terraces of yellow stock brick with stucco decoration and vertical sliding timber sashes, in Sydney Street, Markham Square and Halsey Street. This is not the oldest stock in Chelsea. The area's own key dates begin in 1790, and the genuinely early houses are in Cheyne, a few streets south.

The position is the familiar one, stated with unusual clarity. The buildings within the area were not intended to have painted masonry finishes. Where a whole terrace was painted many years ago in a consistent scheme, that paint has become part of the street's character. Where individual houses have been painted within a brick terrace it harms the uniformity of the terrace and the appearance of the conservation area, and three streets are named for it: Hasker Street, Ovington Street and Sydney Street.

Colour discipline across a terrace is treated as a character issue in its own right, and the appraisal is willing to name streets where it has gone. Stewart's Grove has a variety of painted finishes that break up the uniformity and emphasise each individual house. Markham Street has varied paintwork which, though colourful, breaks up the uniformity of the terraces. Numbers 1 to 13 Burnsall Street are visually compromised by a diversity of painted render colours. Godfrey Street has a great variety of colour schemes. In Tryon Street a number of properties have been painted at first floor level, harming the appearance of the terrace.

Railings are the counterexample. They are painted gloss black throughout, which the appraisal calls a strong and unifying characteristic, and it notes that deteriorating or multicoloured paintwork disrupts that continuity, especially against a light stucco background.

Painting Brick

Not original. Named as harm in Hasker Street, Ovington Street and Sydney Street where individual houses have been painted in a brick terrace.

Pointing

Match struck, tuck or flush. Heavy weather struck pointing widens the joint, hardens the edges and darkens the elevation.

Brick Cleaning

Treated as a risk. Over-cleaning is called out at Sydney Street, Halsey Street and Ovington Street.

Railings

Gloss black throughout, and the appraisal treats that uniformity as a positive feature rather than a default.

The precedent test applies here as elsewhere: modern mansards are of much less heritage value, but do form part of the character of the area where they have been applied to the majority of the houses in a terrace and are of an appropriate design. Original roof forms are of great heritage significance, particularly as a group, and the appraisal names the good survivals: 1 to 9 Anderson Street, 74 to 108 King's Road, 1 to 10 Lincoln Street, The Gateways and 32 to 46 Jubilee Place.

What is more useful is that it describes a preferred design rather than only condemning bad ones. On Markham Street, where the majority of houses now have mansards, the most successful are set behind a parapet with two modest dormers set in alignment with the windows below. That is close to a specification, and it is the sentence worth quoting to a designer.

Against it, the failures are named too. Mansards added to 70 to 86 Sydney Street over time have resulted in slight variations in design that harm the roofscape. In Ovington Street original decorative parapets have gradually been reinstated with new mansards set behind, but the terraces have been harmed with sheer brick extensions to the roof. In Guthrie Street the removal of the dentilled cornice along with an uncharacteristic roof extension has harmed the roofline and disrupted the uniformity of the terrace.

Walton Street is singled out the other way: numbers 114 to 144 and 39 to 69 provide an interesting roofline hardly touched by additional storeys.

The rule is stated simply: all windows in a terrace or pair of houses were originally of the same design, and that remains the case across most of the conservation area. Windows reduce in size and have simpler surrounds as they rise through the building.

Six over six glazing bar sashes are the commonest historic pattern, and the appraisal names where they survive well: 2 to 16 St Luke's Street, which it calls relatively unaltered, 5 to 31 Cadogan Street, First Street, and 16 to 22 Burnsall Street above tripartite ground floor windows. Numbers 3 to 67 and 4 to 68 Sydney Street show their relatively late date through different patterns of window on each floor.

Two twentieth century types matter here and are easily lost. The Gateways of 1934 has windows unique within the area: side hung slender steel casements with leaded lights. Windsor and Arundel Courts on Jubilee Place have steel windows with glazing bars. Replacing either in timber or plastic would be a material change rather than a repair.

On replacements the appraisal objects to more than plastic. It criticises uPVC and aluminium for ignoring the original joinery or steel windows they replace, and then names two further problems: double glazing of larger one over one sashes, which distorts the panes in different atmospheric conditions and draws undue attention in the street scene, and glass with a tinted appearance. Streets specifically criticised for window loss include Pond Place, harmed by the insertion of inappropriate casements in place of sliding sashes, along with Stewart's Grove, Astell Street, Hasker Street, First Street and Walton Street.

The area is well conserved, and the appraisal says so: very few buildings actually have a harmful impact, and it is generally the smaller changes to existing residential properties and shops that cause it. The list is cumulative rather than dramatic. External wires, burglar alarms, plumbing, vents, flues and lights. Heavy pointing and brick cleaning. Painted masonry. Replacement windows and doors, including reveals enlarged to take a standard modern door. Isolated or mismatched roof extensions. Exposed roof plant and roof terrace clutter, which it itemises as tables, chairs, railings, trellis, umbrellas and patio heaters. Entrance steps rebuilt in marble, metric tiles, bitumen or concrete. Clutter in lightwells. Front boundaries lost to off street parking.

Named locations recur. Bray Place suffers badly from unsympathetic garage doors, and Blacklands Terrace has a row of bland garage doors. Markham Square has been damaged by inappropriate features including bay windows, unsympathetic roof extensions and the loss of original detailing, and its 1950s north side does not reflect the grandeur of the square. Markham Street has a host of inappropriate changes, notably the introduction of bay windows, the removal of cornices and the varied paintwork. Cornices have gone from Moore Street, Rawlings Street, Cadogan Street and First Street.

The rear elevation problem is the same one that appears across the borough. Rebuilding a rear elevation and removing the staircase half landings to create a level floor plate loses the characteristic staggered window pattern, and infilling between closet wings creates a solid and flat appearance.

Twelve public houses originally stood in this small area, and the appraisal names all of them with their former and current identities, from the Markham Arms at 138 King's Road, now a bank, to the Wellesley Arms at 70 Sydney Street. It also explains the pattern: public houses were usually the first buildings to be built in a street, to give the builders somewhere to drink and pick up their wages while the houses went up.

Four Victorian warehouses survive and are individually described, at 15 Bury Walk, 6 Burnsall Street, 3 Jubilee Place, which is dated 1888 and retains its hoist doors, and 11 Jubilee Place of 1900, which retains its hoist.

The Gateways on Sprimont Place, built in 1934 by Wills and Kaula, is the set piece: Tudor Revival in thin red brick, shaped brick mullions, cambered plain tiles, steel casements with leaded lights, and two fountain courts entered through pointed diaphragm arches. The Chelsea Society commented favourably on its individual and attractive features at the time.

The war is mapped in detail. Raids on 11 January, 8 March, 17 April and 11 May 1941 are recorded, and the appraisal notes that the six properties destroyed on the west side of Sydney Street on 17 April were rebuilt sympathetically, identifiable now by their modern balcony railings. A high explosive bomb on 74 Cale Street is probably responsible for the present gap site and the rough gable wall of number 70.

Two schemes that would have changed the area were abandoned. A 1939 road widening line, not dropped until 1970, would have demolished 10 to 17 Anderson Street and 108 King's Road to connect Sloane Avenue to the King's Road. And in 1959 the Oratory School proposed an expansion requiring the demolition of seventy seven houses on the west side of Sydney Street; a residents' association formed and the proposals were dropped.