Chelsea is an affluent area in West London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles (4 km).

Even so, Chelsea remained rural and served London to the east as a market garden, a trade that continued until the 19th-century development boom which caused the final absorption of the district into the metropolis.

Almost opposite stands the former Odeon Cinema, now Habitat, with its iconic façade which carries high upon it a large sculptured medallion of the now almost-forgotten William Friese-Greene, who claimed to have invented celluloid film and cameras in the 1880s before any subsequent patents.

In 1718, the Raw Silk Company was established in Chelsea Park, with mulberry trees and a hothouse for raising silkworms.

The best-known building is Chelsea Royal Hospital for old soldiers, set up by Charles II (supposedly on the suggestion of Nell Gwynne), and opened in 1694.

The beautifully proportioned building by Christopher Wren stands in extensive grounds, where the Chelsea Flower show is held annually.

Chelsea Barracks, at the end of Lower Sloane Street, was also in use until recently, primarily by ceremonial troops of the Household Division.

Situated on the Westminster side of Chelsea Bridge Road, it was bought for re-development by a property group from Qatar.

The former chapel of St Mark's College, designed by Edward Blore is on the Fulham Road, Chelsea, and is now a private residence.

It became prominent once again as one of the centres of the "Swinging London" of the 1960s, when house prices were lower than in the staid Royal Borough of Kensington.

[11] Its reputation stems from a period in the 19th century when it became a sort of Victorian artists' colony: painters such as James Webb, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, J. M. W. Turner, James McNeill Whistler, William Holman Hunt, and John Singer Sargent all lived and worked here.

[12] Chelsea was also home to writers such as George Meredith, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Leigh Hunt and Thomas Carlyle.

Jonathan Swift lived in Church Lane, Richard Steele and Tobias Smollett in Monmouth House.

After his death, the house was bought and turned into a shrine and literary museum by the Carlyle Memorial Trust, a group formed by Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf.

The American artist Pamela Colman Smith, the designer of A. E. Waite's Tarot card pack and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, features as "Gypsy" in the chapter "A Chelsea Evening".

Its longest-serving member of staff was Armitage Denton, who joined in 1896 at the age of 22, and he remained there until his retirement in 1939; he was appointed Chief Librarian in 1929.

The Western end of Chelsea featured boutiques Granny Takes a Trip and The Sweet Shop, the latter of which sold medieval silk velvet caftans, tabards and floor cushions, with many of the cultural cognoscenti of the time being customers, including Twiggy and many others.

The "Chelsea girl" was a symbol, media critic John Crosby wrote, of what "men [found] utterly captivating", flaunting a "'life is fabulous' philosophy".

[13] Chelsea at this time was home to the Beatles and to Rolling Stones members Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards.

On 27 November 1974, the London unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army exploded twin bombs on Tite Street, injuring 20 people.

Sloane Street and its environs is quickly catching up with Bond Street as one of London's premier shopping destinations, housing a variety of high-end fashion or jewellery boutiques such as Cartier, Tiffany & Co, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Gucci, Harrods, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo, Giorgio Armani, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Valentino, Bvlgari, Gianni Versace and Graff.

[24] There is a proposal to construct a Chelsea Underground station on the King's Road as part of the Crossrail 2 project (also known as the Chelsea-Hackney line).

[25] According to plans published by TfL in 2008, it is envisaged that the station would be located on the Dovehouse Green area of King's Road.