King's Road
King's Road or Kings Road is a major street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both in west London, England. It is associated with 1960s style and with fashion figures such as Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood. Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirt movement had a barracks on the street in the 1930s.
Location
King's Road runs for just under through Chelsea, in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, from Sloane Square in the east and through the Chelsea Design Quarter on the border of Chelsea and Fulham. Shortly after crossing Stanley Bridge the road passes a slight kink at the junction with Waterford Road, where it then becomes New King's Road, continuing to Fulham High Street and Putney Bridge; its western end is in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham.History
King's Road derives its name from its function as a private road used by King 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. No. 213 has a blue plaque to film director Sir Carol Reed, who lived there from 1948 until his death in 1976. Thomas Arne lived at no. 215 and is believed to have composed "Rule Britannia" there. Ellen Terry lived in the same house from 1904 to 1920, and also Peter Ustinov; Terry's residence is also commemorated by a blue plaque. The photographer Christina Broom was born in 1862 at no. 8.In 1871, the Chelsea Hospital for Women was founded on King's Road, later moving to Fulham Road. The corner of King's Road and Manresa Road was occupied from 1895 to 1985 by Chelsea College of Science and Technology before it was subsumed into King's College London and immediately sold into private hands.
The world's first artificial ice rink, the Glaciarium, opened just off King's Road in 1876, and later that year it relocated to a building on the street.
During the 1960s the street became a symbol of mod culture, evoking "an endless frieze of mini-skirted, booted, fair-haired angular angels", one magazine later wrote. Mary Quant opened her boutique BAZAAR at 138a King's Road in 1955. King's Road was home in that decade to the Chelsea Drugstore, 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.
484 King's Road was the headquarters of Swan Song Records, owned by Led Zeppelin. The company was closed and the building vacated in 1983. King's Road was the site of the first UK branch of Starbucks, which opened in 1999.
In 1984, Keith Wainwright, a pioneer responsible for starting one of the first men's hairdressers catering for the longer men's styles of the time, with such clients including Roy Wood, Cat Stevens and The Walker Brothers, opened the salon "Smile", at 434 King's Road.
535 King's Road was the headquarters of Cube Records, an independent record label of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The label folded in the mid-1970s, becoming part of Elektra Records. The building has since been demolished but the new building on the same site still houses a record company.
In popular culture
The road has been represented in popular culture on various occasions: "King's Road" is the title of a song by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers from the 1981 album Hard Promises and is name-checked in the song "Dick a Dum Dum " which was a hit for Des O'Connor in 1969. In Ian Fleming's novels, James Bond lives in an unspecified fashionable square just off King's Road. Al Stewart wrote "Gina in the King's Road" for his 2005 album A Beach Full of Shells.In the 1960s radio series Round the Horne, in the 'Jules and Sandy' section, their establishment, is often located in the King's Road.
Pet Shop Boys met in an electronics shop on King's Road in August 1981.