LIVING IN CHELSEA

To stroll around Chelsea is to walk in the footsteps of kings and queens, writers and revolutionaries, politicians and painters, thinkers and thespians.

Noted in the doomsday book, Chelsea was a Middlesex village, when Thomas More a high-flying lawyer and recently engaged by Henry VIII, needed a new and sumptuous place to live, appropriate to his new position.

Chelsea quickly became the "village of palaces" as older ennobled families moved in, and the area's new reputation survived More's fall from grace in 1535. Henry himself built a manor house here which was to remain a royal favourite up to the Republic. The district was perfect, close to the centres of power but isolated from the frenzy of town by the swamps of the Five Fields - modern-day Belgravia.

In the nineteenth century it retained its huge popularity with artists and writers - the Victorian roll call of literary and artistic giants who resided here was second to none in London. Elisabeth Gaskell was born here and George Eliot died here. Thomas and Jane Carlyle held court to a spellbound audience that included Dickens, Tennyson, Mazzini, Chopin, the Brownings and Darwin.

A stream once flowed into Chelsea Creek called Stanford Creek. It crossed Fulham Road at Stanford Bridge, which in time would mutate to Stamford and be the chosen term for an athletics stadium built by it in 1877. In 1904 the ownership of the ground changed and the site was offered to Fulham Football Club, who turned it down. The Mears brothers, intent on founding a new football club, leapt at the chance and Chelsea Football Club was born. Although it took fifty years to get any silverware in the trophy cabinet Chelsea have, since 1955, been regular cup winners. 1935 saw the record attendance at the Bridge, against London rivals Arsenal, of 82,905 people. Now that compulsory seating is the order of the day for every ground, it is a record that will stand.