Carlyle Square Gardens

By the early C17th, grand houses, among them those of Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More (Beaufort House) were established around the old village of Chelsea. In subsequent decades more building took place both along the river as well as further inland particularly up Church Lane, now Old Church Street, which developed northwards to the Queen's Elm. This is where Queen Elizabeth I is supposed to have sheltered from the rain with Lord Burghley; the 'Queen's Tree' was recorded as early as 1586 and an arbour was built around it. In the early C16th an area between Duke's Walk and Lovers' Walk called 'Sand Hill's was part of Sir Thomas More's estate, in 1664 called Lord Wharton's Park. After Wharton sold his property in 1714 it became known as Chelsea Park. By c.1718 it had been purchased for a mulberry garden with the purpose of manufacturing raw silk but the venture failed, and Chelsea Park was gradually built over for housing. Park Walk was developed from Lovers' Walk in late C18th and the Camera Square area developed in the early C19th. King's Road, once a private highway, was fronted by villas, terraces and public houses by the 1830s, and through the C19th these properties were extended over their forecourts and behind.

Carlyle Square is a rare exception that survived this redevelopment of widened frontage. It was built by the Cadogan Estate and its original name of Oakley Square was a courtesy title of Earl Cadogan; the King's Road terraces were first to be built from 1836, but the square was not completed until 1867. According to Thompson's Map of 1836, the garden was the first element to be laid out. It was renamed Carlyle Square in 1875 (1872?) after Thomas Carlyle, who lived at No. 24 Cheyne Row from 1834-1881, and whose garden still exists (see Carlyle's House Garden, q.v.). Chelsea became popular with artists, writers and thinkers and by the end of the C19th was well known as an artistic quarter, with the area around The Vale developed specifically for 'occupation by artists, architects, musicians, writers and professional people of modest means'. Among the residents of Carlyle Square were Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell and William Walton at No. 2, where, on 24 January 1922 Walton and Edith Sitwell collaborated on 'Façade' a fusion of music and poetry, performed behind a curtain designed by the artist Frank Dobson (see O. Sitwell, 'Laughter in the Next Room', 1949).

In 1928 Carlyle Square Garden is described as an ornamental garden surrounded by bushes and shrubs that were 'sparse in parts and admit of a view of the enclosure from the outside'. It was accessible only to leaseholders of the surrounding houses as well as those living in adjoining streets and managed by 'a Committee of householders to whom the fees of leaseholders having rights are transferred'. In more recent years the garden frontage onto King's Road was changed to connect the two sides of the square independently of King's Road and to extend the garden on that frontage, along which cast iron railings were reinstated. The gardens today contain a variety of ornamental trees and shrubs and has a metal pergola in a central circular bed, grass and gravel paths.