Chelsea, Fulham and the River

The stretch of London between Sloane Square and Putney Bridge is one of the pleasanter parts of the city to spend an evening in and one of the least written about. It is also, quietly, rather good value.

Chelsea

The King’s Road running west, garden squares either side, and a village that stopped being one about sixty years ago without ever quite admitting it.

What Chelsea has is restaurants. Not the grand hotel dining rooms of Mayfair but a long run of neighbourhood places that have been there decades, with proper tables and normal noise levels. Exactly the shape our post on choosing a restaurant argues for, at noticeably less than Mayfair.

What it does not have is hotels. A handful, none of them large. So an evening here is usually dinner followed by going somewhere else, unless the somewhere else is an incall. See Chelsea.

Sloane Square and the Belgravia edge

The eastern end, where Chelsea runs into Belgravia. Smarter, quieter, better connected, and the part of the area with the mansion blocks that make incall work.

Sloane Square itself is a transport hub as much as a place: the District and Circle lines, and cabs that actually exist at midnight, which is more than can be said for the King’s Road further west.

Fulham and West Brompton

Where it gets genuinely good value. Fulham is residential, calm, full of converted terraces and mansion blocks, and about fifteen minutes from South Kensington.

West Brompton and West Kensington sit between Fulham and Earls Court and share the same character: unremarkable streets, large buildings, nobody paying attention. Our post on the quietest parts of central London explains why that combination matters more than how smart an area looks.

Rates here sit in the lower half of what we list, which for this part of London is a bargain rather than a compromise.

The river, and why it matters

Worth knowing if you are planning routes. The Thames has far fewer crossings than people assume, and the ones that exist funnel traffic.

Practically: an evening that stays north of the river is straightforward, and one that crosses it twice is not. If you are coming from Clapham or Wimbledon, allow considerably more time than the map suggests. See getting around London late at night.

Getting about within it

The District line runs the length of it, which makes Sloane Square to Fulham Broadway a five minute job. The King’s Road itself has no tube along it, which is the single most annoying fact about Chelsea and the reason buses along it are always full.

Cabs are easy at the Sloane Square end and thin at the western end late at night. Walk to a main road.

What to book it for

A dinner that takes its time, in a room where you can hear each other, without a Mayfair bill. Then an incall ten minutes away rather than a hotel.

That combination is what this part of London does better than anywhere else, and almost nobody thinks of it. Our post on what an evening actually costs has the arithmetic.

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