London’s Alleys: Skinners Place, SW1

Around the back of Sloane Square tube station is this short rather fine passageway that was once a lot longer until the railway sliced through the middle of it.Skinners Place is about 200 years old, having been laid out in the late 1820s as the area developed from fields into the posh housing that dominates Chelsea today. You can see half the alley laid out in this Greenwood map from 1828, but looking like it was going to be called Union Street. Half the survives today although at the time, it o