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ALVARO MACCIONI QUANT PUNKS THE STONES BAZAAR SHRIMPTON
Kings Road, Chelsea SW3
Mitre House, 124 Kings Road
King's Road is one of the most fashionable streets in London, associated with 1960s style and fashion figures such as Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood.
Celebrated boutiques included Granny Takes a Trip, where the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix and many other well known stars of stage and screen would go to hang out. Stop The Shop, next door to Mitre House at 126 Kings Road was one of the trendiest shops on Kings Road with a unique and architecturally clever revolving floor.
As such, Mitre House, built in c.1917, is in a very desirable area but is a rather undesirable and unattractive building on the exterior, save for some impressive Portland stoneworks and a very imposing front door with granite surrounds, and above a parade of shops.
King's Road derives its name from its function as a private road used by Charles II to travel up to the hunting fields of Soho or back to Kew. It remained a private royal road until 1830, but people with high connections were allowed to also use it. Houses, many of disrepute, date from the early 18th century. Thomas Arne lived at No. 215 and is believed to have composed "Rule Britannia" there.
Some of the capital’s most popular restaurants and clubs have been associated with Kings Road including Alvaro’s beneath Mitre House, famed for its Italian cuisine, its film star clientele and the fact that it was ex-directory - you could only book if you knew the telephone number! The Pheasantry, a most louche and decadent club where Oscar Wilde dined regularly. The Club del Aretusa, without doubt the capital’s most desirable night club owned and run by Alvaro Maccioni and of course, The Chelsea Arts Club. Ian Fleming's James Bond lived in a square just off King's Road.
The interior, though, is very desirable, with masses of original features, brass, beautiful wooden doors with paned glass artifacts and an attractive, if old, terrazzo floor. The Crittall windows have original stained glass insets, as indeed do the nine flats within their interiors.
King's Road was home in the 1960s to the trendy Chelsea Drugstore with its stylised chrome-and-neon soda fountain upstairs. Originally, the site was a sleezy public house and now its a McDonalds). Malcolm McLaren's infamous punk era boutique, Let It Rock, opened up the unfashionable end of Kings Road towards the World’s
The intended redecoration and improvements to the communal areas presents various opportunities and alternatives as to how best to re-establish its rather cold Edwardian grandeur with its many warm and attractive Art Deco/Art Nouveau fitments of the period.
End, named after an infamous pub. It was changed to SEX in 1974 and then Seditionaries in 1977. Long before the hippie and punk eras, Chelsea was renowned as a magnet for bohemian counterculture, artists, models, photographers and musicians.
SID VICIOUS JIMMY HENDRIX BLUBIRD CHELSEA ARTS CLUB SHRIMPTON LENNON
HARRISON TWIGGY CHELSEA POTTER THOMAS CRAPPER TOWN HALL SIX BELLS MITRE HOUSE
Do we go Park Lane chintzy or Chelsea bohemian?