King's Road - History

History

King's Road derives its name from its function as a private road used by Charles II to travel to Kew. It remained a private royal road until 1830, but people with connections were able to use it. Some houses date from the early 18th century. Thomas Arne lived at No. 215 and is believed to have composed "Rule Britannia" there. Ellen Terry lived in the same house from 1904–1920, and also Peter Ustinov (Actor and play-write), the house is commemorated by a blue plaque. Photographer Christina Broom was born in 1862 at No 8.

In 1876, the world's first artificial ice rink, the Glaciarium, opened just off King's Road, and later that year it relocated to a building on the street.

King's Road was home in the 1960s to the Chelsea Drugstore (originally a chemist with a stylised chrome-and-neon soda fountain upstairs, later a public house, and more recently a McDonalds), and in the 1970s to Malcolm McLaren's boutique, Let It Rock, which was renamed SEX in 1974, and then Seditionaries in 1977. During the hippie and punk eras, it was a centre for counterculture, but has since been gentrified. It serves as Chelsea's high street and has a reputation for being one of London's most fashionable shopping streets. Other celebrated boutiques included Granny Takes a Trip The Sweet Shop in Blantyre Street just off King's road at World's End and Stop The Shop, a fashion boutique with a revolving floor.

484 King's Road was headquarters of Swan Song Records, owned by Led Zeppelin. They left following closure of the company in 1983. King's Road was site of the first UK branch of Starbucks which opened in 1999.

The road has been represented in popular culture on various occasions: "King's Road" is the title of a song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the 1981 album Hard Promises and Ian Fleming's James Bond lived in a trendy unnamed square just off King's Road.