From Punk Rock to Popular Family Enclave - The Ten Acre Estate, SW10

The ‘Ten Acre Estate’ is an enclave of quiet, wide, tree-lined streets situated between the King’s Road and Fulham Road in the heart of Chelsea. With a colourful, edgy and bawdy past, it’s now a very community driven residential area, favoured by families.

The official area of the Ten Acre Estate includes Limerston Street, Langton Street, Lamont Road, Shalcomb Street, Hobury Street and Gertrude Street, with boundaries being Slaidburn Street and Netherton Road to the West, Lamont Passage and Camera Place to the east, Kings Road to the south and Fulham Road to the north.

Much of this area was still parkland and fields until the 1700s, with the Park Walk (formerly Twopenny Walk and Chapel Row) being the elm-tree-lined western boundary of the 40-acre Chelsea Park. Now, the Ten Acre Estate is largely 18C & 19C architecture with some later 20C additions; lovely terraces, elegant garden squares and a vibrant culture for eating, drinking, fashion and the arts due to its long-standing plethora of bars, restaurants and art galleries.

This area has really come into its own since the "gentrification" of the streets off Fulham Road and Kings Road. While very diverse in terms of different nationalities, The Ten Acre Estate is largely owner occupied with residents at home all year round.

There have been many notable occupants of the Ten Acre Estate over the years, and although there are many in residence today, they tend to be the sorts of celebrities who prefer to blend in rather than stand out. There is surprisingly only one blue plaque in the area, that of George Meredith OM (1828-1909), a poet and novelist and friend of Thomas Hardy who lived at 7 Hobury St and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, but never won.

Residential properties are mainly freehold terraced houses with some conversion flats, the area also has some very lovely mansion blocks with well-proportioned purpose-built flats (notably Elm Park Mansions and Devonshire Mews).

A hugely sought-after enclave, it is renowned for its beautiful and exclusive homes, but slightly more affordable prices than neighbouring SW3’s Chelsea Conservation Area. Having said that, anywhere near the kings Road is expensive and in 2014 an eleven by seven foot garage just behind Lamont Road hit the headlines when it sold for £550,000. It was dilapidated and just big enough to fit one car, nothing more, but it had planning permission for a one-storey home with a basement, two bedrooms, en suite bathroom – as well as a living room, kitchen, guest bathroom and patio in a road where the average house price was around £3.5m!

Despite its elevated house prices - it is Chelsea after all !- the Ten Acre Estate has a very friendly, low-key atmosphere, with many well-known, yet un-pretentious residents and an eclectic mix of nationalities, most of whom are in residence all year round. The strong sense of community, closeness to amenities and schools and quiet, low-key ambiance has made it particularly popular with young families.

“The Ten Acres” as it's known to its residents, is a very tight knit community and the Ten Acre Residents Association, or TARA was the first residents' association to be awarded The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Gold Standard Award for excellence in representing residents.

Local long term resident and former Chairman of the Ten Acre Residents Association, business and and artist, John Eagle, describes the Ten Acres to be a fabulous place to live; "family centric, friendly and a great community spirit, with everything on your doorstep" and is proud of its down to earth atmosphere and interesting past.

Residential properties are mainly freehold terraced houses with some conversion flats, the area also has some very lovely mansion blocks with well-proportioned purpose-built flats (notably Elm Park Mansions and Devonshire Mews).

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The area, which has housed all sorts of institutions since its development from fields into residential streets, had a somewhat colourful reputation in the 19th Century, when Lamont Street "was made up of almost as many brothels as family houses" according to the book, 'World's End', with this and surrounding roads including Hobury Street, Limerston, Seaton and adjoining street, Slaidburn (formerly Slayburn) all well known for their bawdy goings-on, servicing the largely gentrified trade from the nearby Cremorne Pleasure Gardens, which eventually closed in 1877. If you've watched Harlots on TV, you'll get a good idea of what this area was probably like at the time!

In the 20th Century it was a haven to many Polish refugees from the Second World War, and also known for its Saturday Night Fights, with salubrious pubs such as The Weatherby Arms, one of the area's roughest pubs on the corner of Slaidburn Street, being at the centre of the brawls. Nowadays of course, The Ten Acre Estate is a much quieter and friendlier place to live!

Home to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, art galleries and florists, it also has several fantastic eateries, including Medlar, Ramsay's maze Grill and La Famiglia restaurant - a favoured haunt of many VIPs such as Brigitte Bardot, Peter Sellers, Michael Caine and Princess Margaret to name a few, who loved the authentic Tuscan atmosphere and food.

There are also a few well-known pubs like The Sporting Page. Originally built in 1856 as the Odell Arms, it was demolished in 1971 and re-built in 1974 as 'The Red Anchor' then, in 1989 re-named 'The Sporting Page' and a favourite haunt of Chelsea fans before and after the game. The Music video 'One Love' was filmed in and around this location, with shots of the Worlds End estate.

Due to its southern border of Kings Road, home to vintage, antiques and fashion boutiques, this area has been regarded as the more bohemian, edgy end of Chelsea for many years, with Opium Antiques and Vivienne Westwood's World's End store still at 430 Kings Road, the site of her former shop, Sex, which she owned with Malcolm Maclaren.

This area was a popular punk rock hangout in the 1970s, with the nearby Man in the Moon pub a favourite haunt of the punk rock movement. Maclaren first opened the shop in October 1971 with a friend from art school, Patrick Casey, and ran it as a stall in the back of the Paradise Garage boutique.

They sold items collected by McLaren, including rock and roll records, magazines, clothing and memorabilia from the 1950s. McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood turned the shop into their boutique, Sex, where The Sex Pistols hung out and rehearsed and where Johnny Rotten auditioned for the band by singing Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” with the Jukebox.

Many people related with the punk scene worked at the shop in one way or another, including Jordan (Pamela Rooke), Glen Matlock, Chrissie Hynde and Sid Vicious also worked there.

These days, this part of the King's Road is still home to vintage and antiques stores, as well as delis and design shops, and while it may have lost a little of its edginess over the years, The Ten Acre estate is still viewed as the cooler, more creative and down to earth end of Chelsea.