Chelsea Physic Garden

Address: | 66 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, SW3 4HS. (Access from the gate on Swan Walk) |
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Phone: | 020-7352 5646 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Apr–Oct 11:00-18:00 |
How to get there: | Bus: 239 from Victoria |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Disabled entrance at 66 Royal Hospital Road, café and shop |
Established in 1673 and first known as the Apothecaries’ Garden, Chelsea Physic Garden first functioned as a training ground for apprentices of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, involved in the cultivation of plants for medicinal use. The ornamental gates on the Embankment once led directly to the river, where the Company’s barge was housed. In 1681 the garden boasted the first heated greenhouse in England, known as the ‘stove’, which attracted the attention of eminent botanists and scientists such as Sir Hans Sloane and John Ray, both keenly interested in the cultivation of rare ‘exotics’. In 1685 John Evelyn visited Chelsea and noted the ‘the tree bearing the Jesuit’s bark’, the source of the expensive anti-malarial quinine. It was also in the 1680s that four cedars of Lebanon were planted, the first in England (the last one died in 1904). One of the trees produced its first cone in 1725, and seeds were distributed widely around the estates of Britain, and also to America. The garden was part of the Manor of Chelsea, which had been purchased by Sloane in 1712. In 1722 Sloane transferred the freehold to the Apothecaries in virtual perpetuity, for an annual rent of £5, for use as a Physic Garden where ‘the power and glory of God in the works of creation’ could be studied. The statue of Sloane, placed at the centre of the garden where its four lawn walks meet, is a copy of that commissioned from Michael Rysbrack in 1733–37, the original having been removed to the British Museum to protect it from further erosion. |
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MUSEUMS & GALLERIES OF LONDON
Details below are taken from our Blue Guide Museums and Galleries of London. This is a 2005 title, here generally updated for website address and opening times, with useful comments from some of the museums themselves. More recent information is given in Emily Barber's magisterial new Blue Guide London, "Exceptional update to a classic and useful guide to this amazing city" (Amazon reader review).
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