I don’t want to go on and on about medical matters but just for the record I got the idea for this week’s post while lying in a cubicle in A&E at the Chelsea Westminster Hospital. A doctor was putting some pressure on a wound in my leg that had been squirting out blood about half an hour before. My mind drifted off and I went through the exercise of asking myself the quintessential local history question: what was here before? What was on this spot before the hospital, and whatever came before that?
Well, the hospital is this imposing building on the Fulham Road, the dividing line between the formerly separate boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea. A long time before that the village of Little Chelsea straddled the border between the two parishes.
The Fulham Road, which had existed under one form or another since the 1300s was the main route between London and Fulham but as you can see from this engraving of 1780 Little Chelsea was a quiet sort of place, never more than a small collection of houses. The first major building in the vicinity was Shaftesbury House. The Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper bought an existing property about 1700 to which he added barns, stables and outhouses not to mention “great and little gardens”. Mrs Marianne Rush depicted it in one of her enigmatic (but not always entirely accurate) watercolours.
The open door is one of her characteristic touches. Shaftesbury didn’t stay very long. He was concerned about smoke affecting his asthma, apparently. In 1710 he sold it to the intriguingly named Narcissus Luttrell. It passed through several hands after that before being sold to the Parish of St George Hanover Square for use as a workhouse. Here it is on Thompson’s 1836 map of Chelsea:
Even then the surrounding area consisted mostly of farms and market gardens. William Cowen ventured down from his home territory of Old Brompton to paint this watercolour showing a solitary man and dog engaged in rural pursuits:
The house was demolished in 1856 to be replaced by new workhouse buildings. The workhouse was known as St George’s Union Workhouse, although it is sometimes misleading called the Chelsea Workhouse. The inmates all came from the parish of St George in the City of Westminster – an early example of exporting the poor. The actual Chelsea Workhouse (St Luke’s) and Infirmary was in Dovehouse Street.
St George’s also had an infirmary opened in 1878 whose patients came from not only from the workhouse but also the Kensington Workhouse (later St Mary Abbot’s Hospital) and other institutions in Westminster. Although the number of paupers accommodated in the workhouse expanded as the institution moved into the 20th century the infirmary also grew in size and importance. New buildings were constructed and hospital functions took over as the number of workhouse inmates diminished.
This postcard shows one of the other confusing names by which the Hospital was known. The name St Stephen’s Hospital was not adopted until 1924. The gothic tower can be seen in many views of the Fulham Road and the area around it.
In 1930 the Hospital was taken over by the London County Council as a municipal hospital (along with 97 other hospitals in Central London). This ground plan from 1934 shows the extent of the whole complex:
The Hospital had become a local institution for Chelsea and was a fixture of local life through the War and into the 1950 and 1960s. Some of the older buildings were demolished and replaced. The hospital became a modern teaching hospital:
A prospectus for student nurses from the 1960s boasts of the excellent teaching and recreational facilities.
New outpatients and emergency departments were built at the same time:
I took a few minor complaints here in the 1980s. The only time I ever went into the remaining older section was visiting in one of the old wards with their long rows of beds. The new wards were preferable:
This picture from 1971 shows a new operating theatre:
The site in 1978 looked like this:
Plans were made in the 1980s for a new hospital which would combine the facilities of four other hospitals: Westminster (from my personal recollection a rather grim and grubby place), Westminster Children’s, West London (a maternity hospital), Hammersmith and St Mary Abbot’s.
St Stephen’s closed in 1989. There was one occasion after the closure when I had to go with my son (now a consultant to the blog on transport matters) to Charing Cross Hospital A&E, so I for one was pretty pleased when the new Chelsea Westminster Hospital opened in 1993.
The Chelsea Westminster has takeaways, a Starbucks (from which another Starbucks used to be visible in an instance of retail overkill) and a post office next to its entrance. Inside is a huge atrium with some nice examples of public art, including the Acrobat by Allen Jones, one of the largest indoor sculptures in the world, and some large slightly dusty hanging fish which I’ve always been fond of, best seen from the third or fourth floor walkways.
For various reasons I’ve spent many hours in this building and although no-one really enjoys being in a hospital I’ve always felt safe and comfortable there as a visitor or occasionally as a patient, which is a good quality in a place of life and death.
Many famous people have come and gone there and it’s been seen in films and on TV. But my favourite of these is the scene in Eyes Wide Shut where it doubles as a New York hospital.
Tom Cruise just visible there through the main entrance. The late Stanley Kubrick was always meticulous in his choice of locations so he must have seen something striking about the place. I remember being amazed as I instantly recognized the revolving doors and the reception desk. Has anyone got any other examples?
Credit should go to Chris Howgrave-Graham and Laurence Martin who wrote the excellent book The Hospital in Little Chelsea to mark the centenary of the hospital in 1978. Some of the pictures in this post come from the book.
I promise not to talk about any of my medical complaints for a while. But I would like to say thank you to all the staff at the Hospital who have treated myself and members of my family over the years we’ve lived nearby.