Little Chelsea

[1][2] Evidence of a settlement known by this name appears in the Kensington parish burial record for a child in 1617 and magistrates accounts of an alehouse run by Thomas Freeman in 1625.

[2] By the 1670s, the Hearth tax lists 23 buildings, of various size and quality, and the section of Fulham Road that ran through the hamlet was known as 'Little Chelsey streete'.

[2] In 1811, the area's mixed character remained with: "... weather-boarded cottages, shops, builders' premises and schools in this part of Fulham Road, but also houses occupied by wealthy retired tradesmen, rentiers and office-holders, with poplars blowing in their front gardens and the orchards and nursery-grounds of south-west Brompton behind them.

[8] In 1723, the company was able to produce satin for Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, however, the removal of the tax on imported silk, two years earlier, had led to financial difficulties and the business closed.

[8] Raw Silk Company shareholder Richard Manningham took over the lease in 1724, but had some rights to the land in 1718, which allowed him to build Park Chapel, in Twopenny Walk, as a local church for Little Chelsea residents.

[11] The chapel land, owned by Cyril Sloane Stanley was donated to the parish, and Charles Bannister paid for the construction of a new church on the site,[10] St. Andrew's, which opened in 1913.