The best of Chelsea by the people who know - Cadogan

23 | STREETS & SIGHTS |
Hans Town
The area of Chelsea that was known as
Hans Town has been frequented by many
remarkable characters, including authors
Jane Austen, Lady Caroline Lamb and
Mary Mitford.
Henry Holland the builder and his son,
Henry Holland the architect, put forward
plans in 1771 to develop 89 acres of fields
and market gardens between
Knightsbridge in the north and Blacklands
— what is now Turks Row, behind the
Saatchi Gallery — in the south. It was an
ambitious scheme. To put it in perspective,
the £2 billion regeneration of King s Cross
which is destined to deliver 2,000 homes,
500,000 sq ft of retail and 3.4 million sq ft
of offices, covers only 67 acres.
The Holland scheme — known as Hans
Town after Sir Hans Sloane, whose heirs
owned the land — became the model for
many new towns in central London during
the building boom in the 18th and 19th
centuries.
Work on Hans Town began in 1777, and
by 1790, spacious three-storey Georgian
terraces lined the west side of Sloane
Street and flowed into Hans Place, Hans
Street and Hans Crescent.
The buildings had been let on 99-year
leases and when the leases came to an
end, the Cadogan Estate launched a redevelopment
programme in a style that art
critic, author and cartoonist Osbert
Lancaster described as Pont Street Dutch .
The red-brick buildings, with their large windows,
ornamentation and gables, are
instantly recognisable.
Sloane Place
Henry Holland the architect built himself a
mansion south of Hans Place, set in three
acres, and had moved in by 1789.
Pont Street Dutch gables
Originally called Sloane Place, it became
known as the Pavilion because the front
of the house was built as a model for the
Brighton Pavilion, with a Doric column
colonnade.
The south of the mansion looked over
landscapes designed by ‘Capability’
Brown, Holland s father-in-law and partner.
The gardens featured a Gothic icehouse
and a faux ruined priory, created
using stones from the demolished home
of Cardinal Wolsey.
The Pavilion was demolished during
the 19th-century redevelopment, but is
commemorated in the name of Pavilion
Road. Cadogan Square was laid out in
part of the gardens.
22 Hans Place
22 Hans Place was a school in 1978,
attended by Lady Caroline Lamb, novel-
ist Mary Russell Mitford and journalist,
poet and novelist Letitia Landon, who
was known by her initials, LEL.
Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828)
married the future prime minister, the
2nd Viscount Melbourne, and is best
known for her affair with Lord Byron. She
famously described Byron as, mad, bad
and dangerous to know.
Mary Mitford (1787-1855), who wrote
Our Village, was a friend of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and had plays produced
in Covent Garden.
Letitia Landon (1802-1838) had her
first poem published in the Literary
Gazette when she was 18, and went on
to become its chief reviewer. Her poetry
was popular but her reputation suffered
after rumours began to circulate that she
had given birth to secret children —
something her fianc John Foster did not
help with when he investigated to see if it
was true.
She broke off the engagement and
married the governor of the Gold Coast
in Africa in 1838, leaving Britain behind.
Two months after she arrived in Africa,
she was found dead with a bottle of
prussic acid in her hand.
After redevelopment, 22 Hans Place
became the headquarters of the Irish
Treaty delegation. It was decided there
on December 5, 1921, that the delegates
would recommend the Anglo-Irish
Treaty, which ended the Irish War of
Independence, to the D il ireann.
23 Hans Place
Jane Austen’s brother Henry lived in a
house at 64 Sloane Street in 1811 and
Jane visited him in the spring, just before
Sense and Sensibility was published. But
two years later, his wife had died and he
had moved to rooms above his bank in
Covent Garden. In 1813, he moved to
23 Hans Place and Jane stayed with him
several times before he became ill in
1815.