Painters & Decorators on Glebe Place, Chelsea SW3

Glebe Place is a fascinating Chelsea street that wears its artistic history on its sleeve. Running between King's Road and Old Church Street through the Chelsea Manor neighbourhood, it is distinguished by the presence of several purpose-built Victorian artists' studios — the large, north-facing skylighted buildings that were constructed in the 1870s and 1880s to serve the colony of professional painters who made Chelsea their home in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These studio buildings are unusual structures: typically two or three storeys with a massive studio window on the north elevation to capture even, diffused light; high-ceilinged main studio spaces; and modest domestic quarters on the upper floors for the artists and their families. Several distinguished painters worked from Glebe Place studios. Alongside the studio buildings, Glebe Place has Victorian terraced townhouses of the conventional Chelsea pattern, some later twentieth-century infill, and a variety of conversion types that reflect the street's gradual transition from an artists' working address to a residential one over the course of the twentieth century. The street is within the Chelsea Conservation Area, and the studio buildings are mostly listed, given their exceptional historical and architectural significance as documentary evidence of Chelsea's Victorian artistic culture. Decorating these studio buildings requires appreciation of their unusual architecture: the enormous studio windows, the high internal volumes, and the industrial scale of the original fittings are all features that must be understood and respected in any decorating project.