Oakley Street, Chelsea


Oakley Street is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It runs roughly north to south from King's Road to the crossroads with Cheyne Walk and the River Thames, where it continues as the Albert Bridge and Albert Bridge Road. The street was named after Baron Cadogan of Oakley.

History

Much of the street is on the site of the former Winchester House, the one-time residence of the Bishops of Winchester in London who had bought the 17th-century part of Chelsea Place from Charles Cheyne in 1664 after the destruction of Winchester Palace in the English Civil War. In 1821, after the house fell into disrepair, the bishop successfully sought an Act that allowed him to sell the house and its ground of 2.5 acres to the trustees of the Cadogan Estate. In 1825, the trustees obtained a further Act to demolish the property and build new houses on the site. Demolition was complete by 1836, but the site was still vacant in 1847. By 1850, there were ten houses at the northern end, and four at the southern by 1851.

Notable buildings

Numbers 1–11, 14–25, 26 and 27, 28–35 and 101–108 Oakley Street are listed grade II on the National Heritage List for England.

Notable residents

No. 2 was owned by John Samuel Phene, a noted property developer and local eccentric.
No. 29 was lived in by Donald Maclean, one of the Cambridge Five spy ring, in the latter 1930s.
No. 42 was where Bob Marley moved to with his wife Rita in January 1977, following an attempt on his life in Jamaica.
No. 56 was the home of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott from 1904 to 1908, together with his mother and sister.
No. 74 was home to actress Dame Sybil Thorndike and her husband Lewis Casson in the 1930s.
No. 87 was home to Oscar Wilde and his mother Jane Wilde, and many years later, the footballer George Best.
No. 89 was the home of David Bowie from 1973 to at least 1976.
No. 93 was home to suffragettes in 1911, who refused to complete the 1911 census on the grounds of "no vote no census". However, the enumerator was able to confirm from the neighbours that the head of the house was Mrs Alice Monck Mason, who lived there with her daughter, Winifred Alice Monck Mason, an actress who went by the name of Winifred Mayo.

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