Beaufort Street
Bus stop in Beaufort Street
Bus stop in Beaufort Street
TypeStreet
AreaChelsea
LocationRoyal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England
Postal codeSW3
Coordinates51°28′59.9″N 0°10′28.52″W / 51.483306°N 0.1745889°W / 51.483306; -0.1745889
NorthFulham Road (A308), Drayton Gardens
SouthCheyne Walk (A3220/A3212), Battersea Bridge, River Thames

Beaufort Street is a street in Chelsea, London SW3.[1] It runs north to south from Fulham Road to Cheyne Walk at its junction with Battersea Bridge, and is bisected by the King's Road.

History

Bank Holiday, Corner of Beaufort Street, Chelsea, an 1889 etching by Théodore Roussel

Beaufort Street is named after Sir Thomas More's home Beaufort House where he lived from 1520 to 1535; it was from Beaufort House that More was taken to the Tower of London, where he was executed.[2] A Samuel Travers acquired Beaufort House in 1724 with the intention of opening it as a school, but was unsuccessful in doing so. Travers's executors subsequently sold the house to Hans Sloane, the owner of the manor of Chelsea, in 1737. The house was pulled down by Sloane in 1740 after having lain empty for 20 years. The former area of the Beaufort House estate became known as Beaufort Ground, encompassing an area from the King's Road to an open ground called Beaufort Green on the banks of the River Thames. The Beaufort Ground was leased for 91 years to the trustees of the Moravian congregation, an expatriate Protestant denomination, who had previously acquired the adjoining Lindsey House. The Moravian community under Nicolaus Zinzendorf created a burial ground and chapel on the site of the former stable yard of Beaufort House; this was reached by a passageway from the rear of Lindsay House. The community intended to start a Moravian settlement named Sharon on the rest of the Beaufort Ground, but were financially precluded from doing so by Zinzendorf's departure from England in 1755. The Beaufort Ground was subsequently leased as building plots by the 1770s. A 1781 inventory of the estate had measured it at 7 acres and the present Beaufort Street was laid down through the site.[3]

The only listed building on Beaufort Street is the chapel of Allen Hall Seminary, the Roman Catholic seminary of the Province of Westminster. It is Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England.[4] The chapel was designed by 1958 by Hector Corfiato and is described in its Historic England heritage listing as demonstrating "a fine example of structural rationalism, dominated by a dramatic concrete-grid façade, and using the internal portal frame to fine dramatic and spatial effect".[4] Allen Hall occupies a site that was bought in 1886 from George Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan, by Kenelm Vaughan, the founder of the Brotherhood of Expiation. The first chapel on the site was converted from two artists studios that had been built in 1879 by the artist and architect William Burges for the painters Louise Jopling and her husband Joseph Middleton Jopling.[4]

The chapel of Allen Hall Seminary in June 2008

In her biography of Roger Fry, written in 1940, Virginia Woolf wrote that "Beaufort Street, whatever may have happened to the world since 1892, is practically unchanged. The years have given it neither dignity nor romance. The houses remain monotonously respectable and identical".[5]

Notable residents

References

  1. 1 2 Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher, eds. (1983). "Beaufort Street". The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. p. 48.
  2. "Thomas More comes to Chelsea". Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
  3. "A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 12, Chelsea: Landownership: Later estates British History Online". Victoria County History. 2004. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 Historic England. "Roman Catholic Diocesan Seminary Chapel, Allen Hall (1430539)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  5. Virginia Woolf (26 February 2015). Roger Fry. Random House. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-4481-8189-6.
  6. "Survey of London, Volume 4, Chelsea, Part II - The site of Beaufort House". British History online. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
  7. "Stark, Arthur James (1831-1902)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36256. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. "Jopling, Joseph Middleton (1831-1884)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36256. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. Spalding, Frances (1980). Roger Fry: art and life. Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press. p. 45. ISBN 9780520041264.
  10. "Cowdy, Edith Frances (1880-1947)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62129. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  11. Reed, Jeremy (25 October 2000). "How to defend dangerous liaisons". The Times. Retrieved 1 December 2017 via The Times Digital Archive.
  12. Griffiths, C. V. J. (2004). "Bentham, Ethel (1861–1931)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50047. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  13. "Cowdy, Edith Frances (1880-1947)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62129. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  14. "Slade, Julian Penkivil (1930-2006)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/97243. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  15. Mosley, Charles (ed.). People of Today (2006 ed.). London: Debrett. p. 1500.
  16. Draper, R. P. (2004). "Fraser, George Sutherland (1915-1947)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/60206. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  17. Fraser, George S. (1981). Fletcher, Ian; Lucas, John (eds.). Poems of G. S. Fraser. Leicester, Leicestershire: Leicester University Press. p. 13. ISBN 9780718512149.
  18. Finzi, John Charles (1957). Oscare Wilde. University of California Press. p. 11.
  19. Hannah Ghorashi; George Pendle. "A Swedish Conwoman, An Indian Prince, And a Grift Gone Terribly Wrong". Air Mail. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
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