This is a row of former stables that backed onto expensive houses in Chelsea, and are now themselves expensive mews homes.
The area was developed from fields owned by Charles Cadogan, 2nd Baron Cadogan, when a lease was signed in 1777 for the architect Henry Holland to layout roads and housing in what makes up much of Sloane Square and Hans Town. Unusually, he took a large plot for himself and built his own mansion house and large gardens, known as Sloane Place. The house and gardens were sold in 1806 to Peter Denys who renamed it The Pavilion, but after his death in 1816 the plot was progressively split into smaller parcels and the mansion house was eventually demolished in 1874 for more housing to be built.
The mews sits very slightly to the south of where the mansion house used to be.
R Horwood Map 1819
As part of the new housing development in the area, grand houses were built facing Cadogan Square, with stables at the rear for the horses and staff, but to give it a bit of a more impressive appearance, an arch and flanking pavilions were built around 1880 and are now Grade II listed.
As with so many stables mews, they slowly became redundant as the horseless carriage replaces the horse and carriage, and many were converted to residential accommodation, the last being converted in the 1970s.
Today it’s a typical mews with a cobbled street, some homes with large collections of pot plants outside and the air of refined privacy for what is still a public highway. Albeit a dead end with nowhere to go.
Mews homes are usually fairly modest in size, but two modern-looking buildings are a recent development and managed to fit four floors into the homes, with a large basement and roof conversion. Similar work has been carried out a mews opposite with a basement slotted in underneath the restored original brick frontage.
A green door at the far end leads to the road on the other side of the wall. It was locked.
