Insuring Georgian Chelsea
It is Chelsea Flower Show this week, so I’ve used it as an excuse to look at some of the references to Chelsea I’ve found while scanning the Hand in Hand policy registers.
Although I’ve not found the company insuring the Royal Hospital Chelsea, where the show is held, it did insure the rotunda at Ranalegh Pleasure Gardens which is now part of the Royal Hospital site. First insured in July 1743 by Edward Burnaby and James Barbutt for £2000, it was described in the register as a circular amphitheatre made of wood and was still insured with the company in the 1760s when the young Mozart performed there.
Other links to the Royal Hospital include insurance of Isaac Garnier who was apothecary to the hospital, Peregrine Furye who was commissioned as agent and solicitor to the ‘Regiment of Chelsea Hospital ‘out patient’ Invalids and Independent companies’ in 1747, and Robert Mann who was treasurer to the hospital. Mann insured his property ‘against Chelsea College Gardens’ with Hand in Hand in 1730 and it had first been insured with the company by John Blow in 1709.
Perhaps the most well-known Chelsea inhabitant to be insured with Hand in Hand was the doctor and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane whose collection of objects from around the world, which was at one time housed in his property in Chelsea, formed the foundations of the British Museum and the Natural History Museum. Sloane built the nucleus of his collection with the help of English planters and enslaved people while working as a doctor on slave plantations in the Caribbean. Returning to England from his travels, he set up a successful medical practice and married a sugar plantation heiress. His patients included aristocracy and royalty and he supported innovations like inoculation from small pox and the health benefits of drinking chocolate mixed with milk which he had come across in his travels. Partly funded by his wife’s money, Sloane increased his collection and grew his property portfolio much of which was in Chelsea and insured with Hand in Hand. He is remembered in local street names such as Hans Crescent and Sloane Square.
Sloane’s home at Chelsea had first been insured, in December 1707, by William Viscount Cheyne after whom Cheyne Walk and Cheyne Row in Chelsea are named. Hand in Hand insured properties on Cheyne Row in January 1708 when they were first built. Compared to other properties in Chelsea these were relatively modest and insured for £250 each. It is interesting that the first owners were all trades people: bricklayer Oliver Maddox, plasterer Francis Parker, joiner Francis Taylor, mason Thomas Hill, and carpenter John Clarkson.
The company also covered several properties in Cheyne Walk, most notably Lindsey House which is thought to be the oldest house in Kensington and Chelsea and is now owned by the National Trust. The house was first insured with Hand in Hand in June 1716 by the Honourable Charles Bertie. In June 1744, the insurance was renewed by Carr Brackenbury for £1500. The insurance doesn’t seem to have been renewed in 1751 which was probably because the house had been purchased in 1750 by Count Zinzendorf for the Moravian community in London. It was later divided into 4 separate properties which were occupied at various points in their history by the historical painter and engraver John Martin, the American artist James McNeill Whistler, and the engineer Marc Brunel — father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Another of the properties Hand in Hand insured in Cheyne Walk also has a Brunel link and was where Isambard Kingdom Brunel was educated. Number 6 Cheyne Walk was first insured with Hand in Hand in February 1717 for £1000 by Joseph Danvers and is described in the register as the ‘House in ye mannor garden next door to Lady Blomberg’. Joseph Danvers died in 1753 and was buried at his family estate in Leicester with a tomb built half inside and half outside the graveyard so that his favourite dog could be buried with him, just outside the consecrated ground. The property in Chelsea then passed to his son, Sir John Danvers, who rented it out to an Italian doctor called Dominiceti. Dr Dominiceti’s surname proved a problem for the Hand in Hand clerks who tried spelling it first as Dominiciti in 1775 and then as Dominicetta in 1781. Dr Dominiceti established a medicinal baths at the property where he treated patients for various illnesses using a combination of bathing, fumigation, and ‘frictions’. According to George Bryan’s 1869 work, Chelsea: In the Olden and Present Times, Dominiceti’s patients included his Royal Highness Edward Duke of York (brother of George III) and he spent over £37,000 adapting the property and fitting pipes and stoves for the baths into an annex to the house. Quite possibly due to the expense, Dominiceti was declared bankrupt in 1782 and by 1795 Sir John Danvers was renting the property to the Reverend Masters. In 1797 the insurance was assigned to a new owner, the Reverend Weeden Butler. According to Bryan, Reverend Butler ran a school there ‘where many persons of considerable rank had been so thoroughly grounded in morality and general learning as to become bright ornaments to their country’. Amongst these was Isambard Kingdom Brunel who joined the school in 1814 when the elder Reverend Butler had been replaced as headmaster by his son, Reverend Weeden Butler the younger (whose brother George Butler DD was headmaster of Harrow School). The house was still being insured by Thomas, grandson of Reverend Weeden Butler the elder, in 1851 in the last policy register in the series.
Chelsea seems to have been a good place to get an education; other schools insured with Hand in Hand include a French boarding school on the north side of the road in little Chelsea. The school, which was first insured by Peter La Touch or Le Touch in October 1713, passed to his son James and was still insured by James’ widow, Mary, in 1756.
In January 1705, another school, Mr Woodcock’s boarding school, was insured with Hand in Hand by Robert Woodcock. Described as being on the north side of the road ‘between ye Church and Mag Pye’ it can be identified as 43–45 Cheyne Walk. It was still insured with the company in 1741 when Edward Butler LLD renewed the insurance and it was described in the register as ‘known by ye name of ye private mad house’ being run by Abigail Pennyman.
Between Cheyne Walk and the Royal Hospital was Paradise Row (now called Royal Hospital Road) where Hand in Hand insured the final properties on my list. Gough House on Paradise Row was first insured in April 1714 by the merchant and politician Sir Richard Gough. The insurance was for £1500 with an additional £100 on the wash house and brew house and £75 on the stables. Sir Richard was also responsible for building Gough Square off Fleet Street. In 1752 insurance on the house at Chelsea was renewed by Sir Richard’s son, Henry Gough, at the same time as several properties on Gough Square including No, 17 which was then occupied by Samuel Johnson as he was writing his dictionary of the English language.
No 6 Paradise Row was first insured by Thomas Hill a mason, who had built Ormonde House Chelsea and worked on the Royal Hospital itself. The property was transferred to Robert Butler in 1711 and in 1713, when his widow Martha took ownership, it was described in the register as occupied by the Countess of Bristol. In 1737 it was the home of Sir Thomas Lombe who, with his brother, John, had developed silk throwing machinery which allowed successful factory-based silk production in Britain.
Very appropriately, our final property on Royal Hospital Road has a horticultural link. In February 1732, the Company of Apothecaries took out £1200 insurance on a green house and hot houses on the north side of the ‘Physick garden between the colledge and ye Thames in Chelsea’. The Chelsea Physic Garden had been established in 1673 and was leased to the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries for £5 a year by Hans Sloane, it is still on the same site today and currently running a restoration project on its greenhouses.
