At Knightsbridge there used to be a toll collector, but I do not recollect any toll gate. A man used to come out of a gate in the fence to collect it, about where the Bank now stands, beside it the Cannon Brewery, a large building with a cannon at the top, with the back overlooking the park. That and White’s menagerie, adjoining the Fox and Bull tavern, were pulled down, and one of the first National Exhibitions was built on the ground. It was for a collection formed by a doctor who had travelled in China. It was a collection of all sorts of curios, illustrative of the habits, idol worship and life and industry of the Chinese, with native workmen and women carrying on their various trades and domestic apparatus, as they did at home with their temples, and performances in idol worship. It was first exhibited at the back of the Alexandra Hotel in a large room in the old barrack yard, and it was such a success that in the following year the large brick building was built on the site of the Cannon Brewery. There were a lot of immense stuffed dragons and winged snakes and flying fish and many-headed monsters and curious reptiles that had never been seen in Europe before, and several Chinese ladies sitting on pedestals exhibiting their deformed feet, which looked like hoofs with a row of small lumps of flesh underneath with nails that represented the toes. There was a large number of visitors, and it kept open for about two years, having had some waxworks added to its attractions.

A little beyond the Alexandra Hotel stood a dairy that was noted for its asses’ milk, which at that time was considered a cure for consumption. There would be as many as forty donkeys there of a morning and they would be driven in pairs by boys round to the customers and milked at their doors twice a day, which was a very large and profitable business.

On the Knightsbridge Road, opposite Gore House, stood an old tavern in the middle of the road with some old stables and sheds, a great place for the market carts and country wagons to stop at of a morning. Gore House became the residence of the Countess of Blessington, her daughter and Count D’Orsay, a very handsome and fashionable Frenchman. There were large grounds attached to the house and they used to give very grand garden parties both public and private, many of them for charities. I recollect going to one given for the benefit of the Caledonian School. It was a very grand and fashionable Fancy Fair with the guards and the Caledonian School band, and Athletic Sports, trials of strength, sword dances and the Highland fling, putting the stone and flinging the hammer, the bag-pipes, and many other Scotch pastimes. The grounds were very beautiful. The property was bought by the commissioners of the ’51 Exhibition from their surplus funds, and the Albert Hall now stands on the site.

The “Admiral Kepple” tavern at the top of College Street stood by itself, with tea garden at the back, and at the west side in the Fulham Road was the old parish pond, and a little farther west at the back of about where the “Stag” tavern now stands was a large pond from which Pond Place took its name. The present road in front of Chelsea Hospital was only a footpath that was closed every Holy Thursday; and the parish authorities beat the bounds, which they did on Holy Thursdays with the two beadles in uniform, the churchwardens, overseers, and parish constable, and the way-warden; and a great number of school children with willow wands would perambulate the parish to beat the bounds, and would knock down the obstruction and pass through the district called Jews’ Row at that part, a labyrinth of courts and passages of small and two-roomed houses. It was called Jews’ Row, bounded by White Lion Street on the east, Turk’s Row on the north, and Franklin’s Row on the west, and was inhabited by the very lowest and most depraved and criminal class both male and female, many low lodging houses and thieves’ kitchens, and the roadway was at least one foot six inches lower than the path, and all along the curb the low, loose women would sit and insult and rob the passers by. It was quite impossible to arrest them as they escaped down the labyrinth of courts and alleys, and it was so well-known as a dangerous locality that very few people would venture through it, while the district lying to the east between White Lion Street and the boundary of the parish, and Chelsea Market, where Sloane Gardens now stand, was nearly as bad, with courts and alleys and crime and depravity. As a market it had long been disused. I can just recollect a few poor miserable stalls on the large open space enclosed by posts and rails in front of the shops in Lower Sloane Street, where Sloane Gardens now stand. This district is now nearly all swept away and made one of the best and most fashionable residential districts of the west of London.

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Dear old Chelsea, the land-marks fast fading away,
Where the warrior, the statesmen, the grave, and the gay,
Came to rest and to play.
Where fair maids and grand dames spent their fortune and fame,
Then flirted away where grand lords and gay courtiers came
For their wooing by the silent highway.
Where men of learning high in the state,
Passed from their hearths to the dungeons and died for their Faith.
Brave to the last,
Dear old Chelsea will soon be but a page of the past.

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