Chelsea Manor & Royal Hospital

Chelsea Manor and the Royal Hospital area sit on the south side of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, anchored by the Royal Hospital Chelsea on Royal Hospital Road. The hospital was founded by Charles II and built to designs associated with Sir Christopher Wren; its red-brick quadrangle and colonnades frame a long central lawn that becomes the site for the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show each May. The complex still houses Chelsea Pensioners and its ceremonial routines, including the nightly evening retreat and occasional public parades, mark the area’s ongoing institutional presence.

Around the hospital, Chelsea Manor Street and the stretch of the King’s Road mix small retail units, cafes and terraced houses with a number of mews lanes and garden squares. The Chelsea Physic Garden lies on Royal Hospital Road, founded in 1673 and maintaining a collection of medicinal and historic plants linked to the area’s botanical history. Street patterns and building lines keep a clear domestic scale; lanes and short walks between the terraces reveal surviving coachways, carved doorcases and modest communal gardens rather than large commercial frontages.