Chelsea Square

By the early C17th, grand houses had been established around the old village of Chelsea, already the site of properties such as Sir Thomas More's Beaufort House. 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 and the 'Queen's Tree' was recorded as early as 1586 and an arbour built around it. In the early C16th an area between Duke's Walk and Lovers' Walk called 'Sand Hill' was part of Sir Thomas More's estate. In 1664 it became Lord Wharton's Park after the then owner, and 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 the late C18th and the Camera Square area developed in the early C19th. During the C19th Chelsea Park was increasingly eroded as Elm Park Road and Elm Park Lane were developed and by 1894 the park and its mansion were gone.

This square was laid out from 1810 as Trafalgar Square but building developed very slowly, although the rectangular garden was laid out in 1810. While the north side and north end of the eastern side of the square were developed by 1836, even by 1865 only one other house had been added to the east side; by the end of the C19th the southern half was still flanked by 2 large houses, a joinery works and a stone yard. In 1928, ownership of the central garden enclosure was listed as Earl Cadogan or his Trustees and leased to a Mr W Garlick until Christmas of that year, who had under-leased it to the Chelsea Lawn Tennis Club. As a result at that time the garden was laid out as tennis courts, and it was surrounded by a privet hedge on a raised bed to obscure views of the interior from outside.

In the late 1930s, as original leases came up for renewal, Trafalgar Square was redeveloped as Chelsea Square, which was designed by architect Darcy Braddell in a demure neo-Georgian style of purple-brown brick with red brick dressings and green pantiled hipped roofs. Careful attention was paid to detailing particularly around the entrances. Stone flags survive on the eastern perimeter of the garden square and the main western pavement. Two houses by Oliver Hill are in the south-west of the square linked by original screen walls and at the north end is a two-storey mews terrace fronted by South Parade. Here the line of mature trees set on a stepped plinth probably survive from the former Trafalgar Gardens, the plinth indicative of the original garden ground level.