The Royal Hospital Chelsea and its Pensioners
Why is it significant?
Face the long, calm brick building with its stone colonnade and lantern on top, and the gilded statue of a figure dressed as a Roman general standing in the courtyard. If you see an elderly gentleman, or lady, in a scarlet coat with medals on the chest, you have met a Chelsea Pensioner.
Key Facts
| Place | The Royal Hospital Chelsea and its Pensioners |
|---|---|
| Address | Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4SR, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.48710, -0.15780 |
| Part of Walk | Pensioners, Poets and Punks: Chelsea's Riverside History from the Royal Hospital to the King's Road, London |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the long, calm brick building with its stone colonnade and lantern on top, and the gilded statue of a figure dressed as a Roman general standing in the courtyard. If you see an elderly gentleman, or lady, in a scarlet coat with medals on the chest, you have met a Chelsea Pensioner.
King Charles II founded the Royal Hospital in 1682, as a home for soldiers who were too old or too badly wounded to serve. He had seen the Invalides being built in Paris for Louis XIV's veterans, and he wanted something just as grand. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren, busy at the same time rebuilding St Paul's, and the first pensioners moved in about ten years later.
Chelsea has a sweeter version of the story. Legend says the real inspiration was the king's mistress, the actress Nell Gwyn, who was moved by the sight of a wounded old soldier begging in the street. There is no evidence for it... but the pensioners are fond of the tale all the same.
That golden figure in the courtyard is Charles II himself, dressed as a Roman, carved by the great Grinling Gibbons. Every year around 29 May, the king's birthday, the hospital celebrates Founder's Day, also called Oak Apple Day. The statue is wrapped in oak branches and the pensioners wear sprigs of oak leaves, in memory of the day in 1651 when the young Charles, on the run after losing the Battle of Worcester, hid from Cromwell's soldiers in an oak tree.
Around three hundred veterans live here today, all former soldiers of the British Army, and since 2009 women have joined them too. For centuries they slept in tiny wooden cabins lining Wren's long wards, now modernised. They take their meals in the great hall, worship in the chapel, and wear the scarlet coat on special occasions, as their predecessors have for more than three hundred years. Now walk west along Royal Hospital Road, past the hospital's old burial ground, to a walled garden full of medicine.