Main MenuThis excerpt from Chelsea author Reginald Blunt’s book ‘Red Anchor Pieces’, published in 1928, describes the lively tavern scene that existed in Chelsea over the centuries:
‘A succession of at least 15 taverns along the riverside from Battersea Bridge to the Royal Hospital seems really more than adequate, when we look up the records; the farm labourers and boatmen who supported them must have cultivated a mighty and persistent thirst to keep them going.
Next door to “The Feathers” was the “Three Tuns” which boasted a bowling green on which Cheyne Row was built about 1708; “The Feathers” was in later years the “Eight Bells” commemorating presumably the peal of eight bells in the Old Church Tower hard by, of which all but no.4 (cast by Janaway in 1762) were sold in 1824 to help provide the St Luke’s in Sydney Street peal of ten.
This by the way may sound a rather high-handed proceeding today; but we may be thankful that the Old Church- eclipsed by Savage’s neo-Gothic creation in Sydney Street- escaped far worse treatment.
For it was on record that there was even talk of pulling the Old Church down and in 1815 the Church Vestry resolve that the Tower be taken down and partially rebuilt with the Turret and Clock by way of finish and that the whole church and tower should then be stuccoed! Fortunately, this precious committee seems to have been dissolved before “improvements” could be carried into effect.’
Some of the other taverns along the Chelsea riverside include The Adam and Eve and the Magpie and Stump.