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Beaufort Street is a street in Chelsea, London SW3. It runs north to south from
Fulham Road Fulham Road is a street in London, England, which comprises the A304 and part of the A308. Overview Fulham Road ( the A219) runs from Putney Bridge as "Fulham High Street" and then eastward to Fulham Broadway, in the London Borough of Hamm ...
to Cheyne Walk at its junction with
Battersea Bridge Battersea Bridge is a five-span arch bridge with cast-iron girders and granite piers crossing the River Thames in London, England. It is situated on a sharp bend in the river, and links Battersea south of the river with Chelsea to the north. ...
, and is bisected by the
King's Road King's Road or Kings Road (or sometimes the King's Road, especially when it was the king's private road until 1830, or as a colloquialism by middle/upper class London residents) is a major street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both ...
.


History

Beaufort Street is named after Sir Thomas More's home Beaufort House where he lived from 1520 to 1535; it was from Beaufort House that More was taken to the
Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic citadel and castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamle ...
, where he was executed. A Samuel Travers acquired Beaufort House in 1724 with the intention of opening it as a school, but was unsuccessful in doing so. Travers's executors subsequently sold the house to
Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector. He had a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British ...
, the owner of the manor of Chelsea, in 1737. The house was pulled down by Sloane in 1740 after having lain empty for 20 years. The former area of the Beaufort House estate became known as Beaufort Ground, encompassing an area from the
King's Road King's Road or Kings Road (or sometimes the King's Road, especially when it was the king's private road until 1830, or as a colloquialism by middle/upper class London residents) is a major street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both ...
to an open ground called Beaufort Green on the banks of the
River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, s ...
. The Beaufort Ground was leased for 91 years to the trustees of the Moravian congregation, an expatriate Protestant denomination, who had previously acquired the adjoining Lindsey House. The Moravian community under
Nicolaus Zinzendorf Nikolaus Ludwig, Reichsgraf Imperial Count (, ) was a title in the Holy Roman Empire. During the medieval era, it was used exclusively to designate the holder of an imperial county, that is, a fief held directly (Imperial immediacy, immediat ...
created a burial ground and chapel on the site of the former stable yard of Beaufort House; this was reached by a passageway from the rear of Lindsay House. The community intended to start a Moravian settlement named Sharon on the rest of the Beaufort Ground, but were financially precluded from doing so by Zinzendorf's departure from England in 1755. The Beaufort Ground was subsequently leased as building plots by the 1770s. A 1781 inventory of the estate had measured it at 7 acres and the present Beaufort Street was laid down through the site. The only listed building on Beaufort Street is the chapel of Allen Hall Seminary, the
Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
seminary A seminary, school of theology, theological college, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called seminarians) in scripture and theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as cle ...
of the
Province of Westminster The Catholic dioceses in Great Britain are organised by two separate hierarchies: the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and the Catholic Church in Scotland. Within Great Britain, the Catholic Church in England and Wales has five provinces, s ...
. It is
Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...
on the
National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...
. The chapel was designed by 1958 by Hector Corfiato and is described in its
Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ...
heritage listing as demonstrating "a fine example of structural rationalism, dominated by a dramatic concrete-grid façade, and using the internal portal frame to fine dramatic and spatial effect". Allen Hall occupies a site that was bought in 1886 from
George Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan George Henry Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan (12 May 1840 – 6 March 1915), styled Viscount Chelsea from 1864 to 1873, was a British Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician. Background and education Cadogan was the eldest son of Henry Cad ...
, by Kenelm Vaughan, the founder of the Brotherhood of Expiation. The first chapel on the site was converted from two artists studios that had been built in 1879 by the artist and architect
William Burges William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian era, Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, ...
for the painters Louise Jopling and her husband Joseph Middleton Jopling. In her biography of Roger Fry, written in 1940,
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...
wrote that "Beaufort Street, whatever may have happened to the world since 1892, is practically unchanged. The years have given it neither dignity nor romance. The houses remain monotonously respectable and identical".


Notable residents

*
Sir Thomas More Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry V ...
, Lord High Chancellor of England, lived from 1520 to 1535 in ''Beaufort House'', on the site of the later Beaufort Street. *The painter Arthur James Stark was born on Beaufort Street in 1831. * Louise and Joseph Middleton Jopling lived at No. 28, Joseph died there in 1884. *
Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and art critic, critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent ...
, artist, set up a small studio at 29 Beaufort Street in 1892, on his return to England after studies in Paris. He shared the accommodation with verse playwright Robert Trevelyan. *The writer and raconteur
Quentin Crisp Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt;  – ) was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of his life and various media appearances. Before becoming well known, he was an artist's model, hence the title of h ...
lived on the first floor of No. 129 for more than thirty years. His notably squalid lodgings inspired
Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramat ...
to write his 1957 play ''
The Room ''The Room'' is a 2003 American independent romantic drama film written, directed, and produced by Tommy Wiseau, who also stars in the film alongside Juliette Danielle and Greg Sestero. Set in San Francisco, the film is centered around a ...
''. Crisp said of his living conditions that "after four years the dirt doesn't get any dirtier". *The GP and Labour MP
Ethel Bentham Ethel Bentham, (5 January 1861 – 19 January 1931) was a progressive medical doctor, a politician and a suffragist in the United Kingdom. She was born in London, educated at Alexandra School and College in Dublin, the London School of Medici ...
died at her home at 100 Beaufort Street in 1931. The travel agent and
Women's Royal Naval Service The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS; popularly and officially known as the Wrens) was the women's branch of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. First formed in 1917 for the World War I, First World War, it was disbanded in 1919, then revived in ...
organizer Edith Frances Crowdy subsequently lived there in the 1940s. *The composer and playwright Julian Slade spent his latter years in a basement flat at 86 Beaufort Street; he died in 2006. *The Scottish writer and scholar George Sutherland Fraser lived at 75 Beaufort Street with his mother and sister after being demobbed from the British Army following the Second World War. Fraser subsequently met his wife, Eileen Lucy Andrew, a fellow poet and resident of Beaufort Street, and the pair married in 1946. *The novelist and biographer
Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer detailed studies of Victorian era, Victoria ...
(aka
Mrs Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer detailed studies of Victorian society, inc ...
, 1810–1865) lived at No. 7 Beaufort Street in 1811 and 1827–29. *
Charles Ricketts Charles de Sousy Ricketts (2 October 1866 – 7 October 1931) was a British artist, illustrator, author and printer, known for his work as a book designer and typographer and for his costume and scenery designs for plays and operas. Ricketts ...
lived at number 31 when writing to
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
.


References

{{Reflist Streets in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Chelsea, London King's Road, Chelsea, London