Place Name
Originally Trafalgar Square after Lord Nelson’s famous victory in was changed in the 1930s as part of a London County Council review of street names as it sought to delete duplicate and confusing names. The decision provoked some outcry. In September 1937, Lawrence E Tanner, wrote to the Sunday Times to complain: “Recently, to the no small irritation of some of the inhabitants, Trafalgar Square, Chelsea, was carefully changed to Chelsea Square to prevent possible confusion with the square of the same name in Westminster. But what perhaps is not realised is that if, in its wisdom, the authority concerned, decided to retain the name of the square in Chelsea and rename the other ‘St. Martin’s’ or ‘Westminster’ Square it was perfectly within its powers to do so, and that this kind of thing is what is taking place in miniature all over London.” The name Chelsea itself was first recorded in the Anglo-Saxon charters, it was first written as Caelichyth in AD767, and Celchyth in AD789. It is from two Old English words chalk or perhaps limestone and hȳth meaning a landing place, suggesting that there was a wharf based here from where cargo was landed or shipped. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 the name had transformed into Chelched and down the centuries into Chelchuthe (1300); and Chelsyth Alisa Chelsey in 1556. David Mills in A Dictionary of London Place Names explains: “Chalk, much valued as a commodity in early times for increasing crop yields as well as for building and limeburning, was probably shipped up the Thames from Chalk near Gravesend in Kent where there is a natural outcrop, then unloaded and transported for use in the clayey Middlesex fields as well as in the City.”
