Four Centuries in One Designation
The four boundary roads appear on Hamilton's map of 1664, enclosing forty acres known as Lord Wharton's Park. Around 1718 the land, by then called Chelsea Park, was bought to form a mulberry garden by a company holding a patent for the manufacture of raw silk. That venture failed, as did a later tapestry works based on the Raphael cartoons.
What was built instead arrived in distinct phases, and the appraisal is precise about them. By about 1830: Park Walk, the King's Road, Dovehouse Street, South Parade and the southern part of Carlyle Square. Mid-Victorian: Elm Park Road, the north half of Beaufort Street, Elm Park Lane and the rest of Carlyle Square. The 1910s and 1920s: The Vale, Mallord Street, Mulberry Walk and Queen's Elm Square. The 1920s: Chelsea Park Gardens. The 1930s: Chelsea Square.
That last phase is why this area matters beyond Chelsea. Numbers 66 and 68 Old Church Street are by Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry. Number 64 is by Mendelssohn and Chermayeff and listed at Grade II star. Numbers 39 and 40 Chelsea Square are by Oliver Hill, number 40 also at Grade II star on the strength of an intact interior. Number 117 Old Church Street is Halsey Ricardo, combining dark brick and de Morgan tiles.
The Rear Is a Front Here
The standard London assumption is that the back of a terraced house is utilitarian. In this conservation area that assumption is wrong, and the appraisal says so directly: the vast majority of rear elevations have been treated differently and have a more formal appearance, using good quality facing bricks with contrasting brick or stucco decoration and a more uniform and balanced fenestration.
It follows that ill-conceived rear extensions can seriously harm those elevations. The formal rears it names are numbers 29 to 39 Carlyle Square, seen from Old Church Street, and numbers 63 to 68 Chelsea Square.
One failure mode is called out by name, and it appears in a great many whole-house schemes. Rebuilding a rear elevation has often involved removing the half-landings of the stairs to create a level floor plate. That loses the characteristic staggered window pattern and harms the fenestration rhythm at the rear. If a level rear floor plate has been drawn on a house whose staircase turns on half-landings, it is worth raising before the application goes in.
The closet wing rhythm applies here as elsewhere: wings project about half way across the rear, leaving a void frequently infilled at lower ground level, and infilling it creates what the appraisal calls a solid and flat appearance.
Roofs, and a Direction That Covers Nothing Else
This appraisal starts from a stronger position than most. The area is fortunate to have retained the vast majority of its original roof forms intact, they are of great heritage significance, and they matter particularly as a group providing consistent rooflines. Traditional butterfly roofs are not common here, many having already been altered to mansards.
Carlyle Square carries the consequence. Article 4 Direction 58, sealed in March 1988 and approved by the Secretary of State that July, covers numbers 4 to 39 and removes permitted development rights for alterations, improvements and extensions to any part of the roof. Nothing else. It is a roof-only direction, and it is the direct counterpart of the appraisal's observation that the addition of a mansard to one of the houses has caused significant harm to the roofscape.
Elsewhere the appraisal effectively writes a specification. On Elm Park Road it criticises roof extensions that cut gaps in cornices and remove blocking courses to give inserted dormers a view of the street, and describes the acceptable alternative: more discreet mansards, lower, finished in natural slate, with flat roofed dormers set behind the blocking cornice and the original facade left intact.
Green glazed pantiles are the signature covering on Braddell's Chelsea Square, on both the original mansards at 12 to 17 and the hipped roofs. Substituting slate or plain clay there is a material change, not a like-for-like repair.
Brick, Pointing and Cleaning
The buildings here were not intended to have painted masonry finishes. Where a whole terrace was painted long ago in a consistent scheme that has become part of the street's character; where individual houses have been painted in a brick terrace, or garish schemes introduced, the uniformity is harmed.
Numbers 30 to 34 Elm Park Road are the only three houses in their terrace left unpainted, and the appraisal treats them as the reference for how the whole group originally looked. Number 34 is also the only house in that run retaining its original roof profile. On Beaufort Street it records that recent works to remove paint from some houses have improved their appearance considerably, which is one of the few places in any RBKC appraisal where paint removal is positively endorsed.
Pointing is treated at length, which is unusual. Heavy weather struck pointing creates larger joints, hard straight edges and shadow gaps, makes buildings appear darker and puts the visual emphasis on the joint rather than the brick. The historic forms to match are struck, tuck and flush. In Mulberry Walk and Mallord Street it records cement mortar and buttered-over brick edges as having had a noticeable harmful impact.
Brick cleaning is treated as a risk rather than an improvement: it can damage the fabric and lose the patina of age, and one heavily cleaned house makes a terrace less harmonious.
- Carlyle Square 4 to 39
- Direction 58, 1988. Any alteration or extension to any part of the roof needs permission. Roofs only.
- Chelsea Square 28 to 33, 63 to 68
- Direction 89, 2003. Windows and doors. The words 'fronting the highway' are struck through on the sealed direction, so it catches any elevation.
- Chelsea Park Gardens
- Direction 33, 1978. Enlargement, improvement or other alteration of a dwellinghouse.
- Pointing
- Match struck, tuck or flush. Heavy weather struck pointing is named as harm, as is cement buttered over brick edges.
Basements, Gardens and Parking
The appraisal does address basements, unlike The Boltons, and its concern is what shows from the street. The introduction of new basement levels has brought unsympathetic rooflights to street frontages, which draw undue attention by highlighting the presence of a new basement and add visual clutter.
There are no publicly accessible green spaces in the area at all. What exists is private: the large communal squares at Carlyle Square and Chelsea Square, smaller communal gardens at Queen's Elm Square and behind Chelsea Park Gardens, and the Western Synagogue Cemetery, the first Jewish cemetery west of the City.
Front gardens have fared badly in places and the appraisal names them. Mulberry Walk has lost front gardens, trees and original paving across its full length, with the setting of many houses now dominated by the car, while Mallord Street next door has generally kept them. Numbers 82 to 88 Elm Park Road have had front boundaries removed for off street parking. The rear garden wall on the west side of Carlyle Square, fronting Old Church Street, has been breached repeatedly for garaging. Inserting garage doors within boundary walls is identified as harm in its own right.
One boundary type is specific to here and should not be replaced with standard railings: at Chelsea Park Gardens numbers 32 to 94, houses stand back behind a small common garden enclosed by a dwarf front wall entered through gates with ball finials, which the appraisal calls unique to the conservation area. Post and chain boundaries elsewhere in the area are a recognised twentieth-century type rather than a cheap modern substitute.