SHRINES of BRITAIN'S GLORY

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16780, 24 April 1926, Page 18 (Supplement)

SHRINES of BRITAIN'S GLORY

CHELSEA.

Chelsea, a riverside suburb of London, which is generally believed to derive its name from Anglo-Saxon "Chesel-sey," meaning "gravel-isle," has been closely associated with some of the greatest figures in British history during the past four centuries. Its most famous resident was the Chancellor and one-time bosom friend of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More, who built a mansion at Chelsea, wliich was his home from 1524 until his removal to the'Tower of London, where he was executed in 1535 for the crime of refusing to acknowledge that the royal tyrant was the head of the Church. Erasmus, the Dutch writer, and Holbein, the artist, lived with More at Chelsea for some years, and the king was his constant visitor. Soon after he had sent More to the scaffold Henry built a manor house at Chelsea, which became the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth, who lived there with her step-mother, Katherine Parr, and in later years the house was the residence of the Duchess of Monmouth after her husband had been executed by James 11. Chelsea became a fashionable resort in the reign of Charles 11., and the Merry Monarch was a constant visitor to Sandford Manor House during the time it was the residence of Nell Gwynne. A century later a large plot of land was laid out as an entertainment park, known as Ranclagh Gardens, which for over 60 years was one of the most popular places of amusement in London and figured prominently in many of the works of the Georgian novelists.

The oldest building in Chelsea is the picturesque church which dates back to 1350, and has been described as the most unspoilt church in Great Britain. It was there that Sir Thomas More donned the surplice of a parish clerk and sang in the choir, and il was the scene of the secret wedding of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour several days prior to their public marriage. More erected a tomb and monument for himself in the church, but it is not at all certain that the remains of the great man rest there, for after his execution his daughter removed his head to Canterbury for burial, and there is no record of what became of his body. The church contains the graves of the mother of Lady Jane Grey, Shadwell the poet, and Hans Sloane, the physician, who bequeathed his- celebrated Physics Garden at Chelsea •to the Apothecaries Company. The father of the novelists, Charles, and Henry Kingsley, was once rector of the church, and Henry has given us a vivid description of old Chelsea in his story of "The IFllyors and the Burtons."

Nell Gwynne is popularly supposed to have induced Charles 11. to erect Chelsea Hospital, but the credit for the foundation of this historic home for aged soldiers is due to Sir Stephen Fox, who was paymaster-general in the reign of the Merry Monarch. The

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building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and in its hall and chapel are to be found numerous treasured relics of British victories on the battlefield. The Hospital has 550 inmates, all old soldiers, who wear a quaint 18 th century uniform consisting of a cocked hat and long coats, scarlet in summer and blue in winter. Dr. Charles Burney, the historian of music and friend of Johnson, was organist at the Chapel for over 30 years, and the Hall was the scene of the lying-in-state of the great Duke of Wellington. For three centuries many of our most famous literary men and painters have made their homes at Chelsea. Among the great artists who have resided there are: Daniel Maclise, the friend of Dickens; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who installed a menagerie in his back garden, much to the annoyance and terror of his neighbours; "Turner, who studied the misty sunrises and sunsets from the flat roof of his house and, like his near neighbour, Whistler, learned how beautiful the most commonplace objects . became when viewed through the haze which overhung the great city. ]t was the female members of the artist colony in Chelsea who started the present world-wide craze for bobbed hair. Its list of famous literary residents is a lengthy one, and includes Joseph Addison, Sir Richar.' Steele, Dean Swift, Tobias Smollett, Henry Fielding, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Leigh Hunt, George Meredith, and Hall Cajne. A memorial tablet recently unveiled in the church to Henry James, the American-born novelist, who died in Chelsea in records the fact that "he renounced his cherished citizenship to give his allegiance to England in the first year of the Great War." The house in which Thomas Carlylo lived for over 40 years, and where he died in' 1881, is now a museum with many personal relics of the Sage of Chelsea, and there may be seen the sound-proof study which he built on the roof. He was once visited there by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on which occasion the two geniuses sat in front of the kitchen fire for a considerable time without exchanging a word but gravely puffing away at their long clay pipes, and each afterwards declared the other to have been a most congenial companion. In Chelsea is preserved another grand old relic with a glorious past, namely, Crosby Hall. It was erected in the City of London in 1470 by Sir Thomas Crosby, and afterwards became the home of many famous men, including Sir Thomas More before he went to Chelsea, and the notorious Duke of, Gloucester, who afterwards became Richard 111. After being in turn a palace, a prison a warehouse and a restaurant it was demolished at the commencement of the present century, and its splendid' banquclting hall, with its fine oriel window and hammerbeam roof, was re-erected at Chelsea on part of the site of More's old residence there.