London’s Alleys: Flood Walk, SW3

This is a short passage in Chelsea that sounded more interesting than it ended up being and was a lot more confusing than I would have expected.

The main road that Flood Walk leads off was originally a country lane called The Pound Lane.

It was later renamed Robinsons Lane, after Sir Ernest Robinson, around when housing developments were first appearing. By the 1820s though it had changed its name again, to Queens Street. This is also when Flood Walk first appears, although obviously it’s not called that — it was originally called Wellington Street.

Eventually, in 1906, Queen Street was renamed Flood Street, and by the 1940s, at long last, Flood Walk was given its current name. Phew!

Despite their position close to the river, neither has anything to do with water flooding, but are named after Luke Thomas Flood, a local landowner and philanthropist.

When first built, Flood Walk was lined with rows of terraced housing, but today, none of that survives, mainly thanks to clearance work in the 1910s. The south side was cleared and replaced with blocks of flats owned by the Peabody Trust as part of the Manor Street Estate.

The north side is more interesting.

Dominating half of the walk is a large grey low-rise office building — in what was originally the Wolseley Motor Car Works, and later became the headquarters Eustace Watkins, the main Wolseley distributor in London for almost half a century. One of the other firms that traded there at one time was the Electric Landaulet Company. This early type of electric car had a short burst of popularity before petrol cars had replaced them.

The garage was converted into offices in 1969.

The other dominant building on Flood Walk is the former Violet Melchett Infant Welfare Centre, which was built between 1930 and 1931 for the Chelsea Health Society and the Chelsea Day Nursery. It was designed by FJ Buckland of Buckland and Haywood in a neo-Georgian style.

Named the Violet Melchett Infant Welfare Centre, it was taken over by the council in 1967 and is now part of the NHS.

So Flood Walk, which has nothing to do with flooding and once lined with rows of terraced housing is dominated by just four buildings — two blocks of flats, a former car garage and a health centre. And an awful lot of cars.