Chelsea Riverside

The route

1. Oscar Wilde

   1854–1900 · 34 Tite Street, Kensington and Chelsea, SW3

   Wilde lived at 34 Tite Street from 1884 until 1895, wrote The Importance of Being Earnest here, and was arrested here.

2. about 378 m from the last stop

   George Eliot

   1819–1880 · 4 Cheyne Walk, Kensington and Chelsea, SW3

   Mary Ann Evans moved into 4 Cheyne Walk in December 1880 and died three weeks later. The house looks straight out at the river.

3. about 152 m from the last stop

   Algernon Charles Swinburne

   1828–1882 · 16 Cheyne Walk, Kensington and Chelsea, SW3

   One plaque, two poets: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne shared this house — Rossetti kept a menagerie in the garden, wombat included.

4. about 220 m from the last stop

   Bob Marley

   1945–1981 · 42 Oakley Street, Chelsea

   Marley rented this house in 1977 while the Wailers were in London recording Exodus and Kaya. One of the newer plaques on the walk, put up in 2019.

5. about 478 m from the last stop

   Alexander Fleming

   1881–1955 · 20a Danvers Street

   Fleming had already found penicillin at St Mary's in 1928; he lived here in Danvers Street for the rest of his life.

6. about 184 m from the last stop

   Elizabeth Gaskell

   1810–1865 · 93 Cheyne Walk, Kensington and Chelsea, SW10

   Gaskell was born at 93 Cheyne Walk in 1810. Her plaque is one of the oldest on this walk, put up in 1913.

7. about 26 m from the last stop

   James Abbott McNeill Whistler

   1834–1903 · 96 Cheyne Walk, Kensington and Chelsea, SW10

   Whistler lived next door but one to Gaskell's birthplace, and the river outside is the one in his Nocturnes.

8. about 262 m from the last stop

   Sylvia Pankhurst

   1882–1960 · 120 Cheyne Walk, Kensington and Chelsea, SW10

   The most radical of the Pankhursts lived at the far end of Cheyne Walk — East End organiser, anti-fascist, and eventually a citizen of Ethiopia.