About 1523 Thomas More (1478-1535) the newly appointed Speaker of the House of Commons bought the estate in Chelsea where he built what his friend Erasmus called 'a comodious house, neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough'. The site of the house is not certainly defined but it is placed here about half way up Beaufort Street. The main access from the river was provided by a landing stage believed to be about where there is now the northern foot of Battersea bridge. The area of the estate was essentially the western third of the manor of Chelsea. It seems that its boundaries would roughly be defined by: Old Church Street; Fulham Road; Chelsea Creek, as it extended under Stamford Bridge; and the river. Within that area were: a stable block of which there are walls standing around a garden at the northern end of Milmans Street; the extant Lindsey House, which was built in place of the farmhouse where More and his family lived when their new house was being built; and the Roper garden which is in the area that More gave to his son-in-law William Roper. The layout of the estate provided for: an arable farm; orchards; a kitchen garden; and a zoo, as well as the lawns between the house and the river.

Thea Holme's 'Chelsea' includes:
'Near the house, the garden was arranged to do justice to the view. Ellis Heywood [who married More's niece] describes how, after dinner, More conducted his guests 'about two stones' throws into the garden, walked on a little lawn in the middle, and up a green hillock, where they halted to look round them. 'It was an enchanting spot, as well from the convenience of the situation - from one side almost all the noble City of London being visible, and from the other the lovely Thames, surrounded with green fields and wooded hills - as for its own beauty, being crowned with an almost perpetual verdure.'

Henry VIII appointed More Lord Chancellor in place of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529. This was much against More's wishes and he resigned the office in 1532. After his martyrdom, in 1535, his widow and family (at one time his 4 children, their spouses and their 11 children lived here) were turned out of the house. The widow was pensioned by Henry VIII and in 1544 housed on the estate. Sir Thomas was canonized in 1935. The house was subsequently the home of several grandees ending with the Beaufort family from whom Sir Hans Sloane bought it in 1737, when it was derelict, and had it pulled down.

O/S Co-ords:2687.7558
Source(s):

Chelsea

This was the name of the house which Sir Hans Sloane bought in 1737 and which he required his gardener/housekeeper to start demolishing in 1739. Originally it was the house built by Sir/Saint Thomas More on the estate he bought in about 1523. After More's beheading in the Tower of London in 1535 the house went through many hands:
First it was gifted to Sir William Paulet, later Marquis of Winchester;
Then, from his son, sold to Anne, Lady Dacre, who bequeathed it to the Cecils; Lord Burleigh sold it in 1598 to a miser, the Earl of Lincoln, on whose death it passed to his son-in-law Sir Arthur Gorges who split the estate;
The old house, with lawns to the river and 40 odd acres behind, was sold to Lionel Cranfield, Lord Treasurer to James I of England and VI th of Scotland;
Next, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who with the King was a godfather to a child of Cranfield's, helped Cranfield to fall from favour and himself to the house;
His widow lived there until the Roundheads used it as barracks after which it passed to the surviving son, George - of whom Dryden wrote he was 'Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late; He had his jest, and they had his estate.';
So, about 1675, his major creditor sold it to George Digby, Earl of Bristol who died in 1679;
It was Digby's widow who sold to the first Duke of Beaufort in 1681 and it was after the death of the Dowager Duchess of the second Duke, in 1716, that the house fell into disuse.

The Dutch scholar Erasmus who was a friend of More's from 1499 did not see the house but described it as 'a comodious house, neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough'. The site of the house is not certainly defined but it is placed here about half-way up Beaufort Street. The main access to More's house from the river was provided by a landing stage believed to be about where there is now the northern foot of Battersea bridge. The area of the estate then included: a stable block of which there are walls standing about a garden at the northern end of Milmans Street; the extant Lindsey House, which was built in place of the farmhouse where More and his family lived when their new house was being built; and the Roper garden which is in the area that More gave to his son-in-law William Roper. The Countess of Bristol asked the diarist John Evelyn to help her to sell the house and he produced the following fulsome but unsuccessful effort at an estate agent's puff, 'Besides a magnificent house, capable of being made (with small expense) perfectly modish; the offices, gardens, and other accommodations for air, water, situation, vicinity to London, benefit of the river and mediocrity of price nowhere to be paralleled...' and 'There belongs to Chelsey House sixteen acres of ground, with several large gardens and courts, all walled in and planted with the choicest fruit that could be collected either from abroad or in England.' There is one readily visible remnant from the house some five miles upstream. The gates designed by Inigo Jones for Lionel Cranfield were given by Sloane to Lord Burlington and placed at the entrance to his Chiswick House, 'both within and without a fine bijou', causing Pope to write:

O/S Co-ords:2687.7758
Source(s):

Chelsea