St Luke's Gardens *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

St Luke's Church was built 1820-24 as the new parish church for Chelsea when the old parish church of All Saints, later called Chelsea Old Church (q.v.) had declined. St Luke's was designed by James Savage (1779-1852), the first Neo-Gothic church in London. Charles Dickens was married here to Catherine Hogarth on 2 April 1836, as was Jerome K Jerome author of 'Three Men in a Boat', and Charles Kingsley was clergyman. The 0.5-hectare area to the south had been used as a graveyard from 1813 onwards. High perimeter walls and railings were built to deter grave robbers, who are known to have been responsible for stealing bodies from the nearby Kings Road burial ground, now Dovehouse Green (q.v.). The churchyard was closed to burials in 1857. In early 1887, with a grant of £1,500 from the LCC to acquire the site, which was the responsibility of the Vestry of Chelsea, this was laid out as a public garden to designs by the Borough Surveyor, Mr Strachan, and planted by Messrs. Veitch; it was opened by the Countess Cadogan. However, prior to this, Fanny Wilkinson is known to have drawn up plans and estimates for laying out St Luke's burial ground in 1884, according to the minutes of a meeting of the MPGA on 5 February 1884. Wilkinson became honorary landscape gardener to the MPGA and was responsible for the design of many gardens, including disused churchyards that were converted into public gardens.

The layout of St Luke's Garden has paths along boundaries and in a curving X-shaped division of the central area; circular rose beds are set in the lawn to north and south of the centre, with lesser circular annual bedding schemes to east and west, three on each side. The walls to north and south are lined with gravestones. Fine mature trees along the boundaries and set into the lawn include plane, acacia, hawthorn, Tree of Heaven, lime, sorbus, catalpa, chestnut, holm oak, sycamore, weeping ash. With numerous seats and its unusual and attractive flower displays St Luke's Gardens is a popular relaxation area for both visitors to the King’s Road and local residents.

On the northern side of the church is a 0.5-hectare area of Recreation Ground with sports facilities. In 2007 a planning application for improvements was successful and new facilities were added including a playground, changing room and toilet block, which has a planted green wall, as well as works to the gardens. The perimeter beds are well planted. Immediately around the church, which is fenced off from the gardens to the south and recreation ground to the north, is grass and gravestones.