Chelsea Old Church (officially, All Saints, Chelsea) has been since medieval times the parish church of the riverside village of Chelsea, a mile or so up the Thames from Westminster. Its primary claim to fame is its association with Sir Thomas More, whose modern statue faces the river outside the church. During the 1520s and early 30s More lived at Beaufort House, a stately home surrounded by spacious gardens just a short distance from the church. In fact, the public gardens across Old Church Street are on the site of More’s apple orchard. Beaufort House itself stood just beyond the orchard, and today the site is occupied by Crosby Hall, another of More’s residences moved from Bishopsgate Street. The Beaufort Stairs down to the Thames once were at the back of his garden. Thomas More, though a lawyer and politician by profession, practised his Roman Catholic faith with consistency.
According to one historian, ‘More rose early, and assembled his family morning and evening in the chapel, when certain prayers and Psalms were recited. He heard mass daily himself, and expected all his household to do so on Sundays and festivals’. His friend, Erasmus of Rotterdam, wrote of his domestic life: ‘I should rather call his house a school, or university of Christian religion... there is no quarrelling or intemperate words heard; none seem idle; that worthy gentleman doth not govern with proud and lofty words, but with well-timed and courteous benevolence; everybody performeth his duty, yet is there always alacrity; neither is sober mirth anything wanting’.
More took considerable interest in the ancient parish church, and expended large sums of his own money for its improvement. He provided the communion plate, remarking prophetically, ‘Good men give these things, and bad men will soon take them away’. The More Chapel, entered from the south aisle, was rebuilt at his expense in 1528 (the date is visible on one of the pillar capitals). On the south wall is a memorial to More and his first wife—it was originally placed by More for his first wife in 1532. He also wrote his own epitaph, which was engraved on a tablet of black marble and placed in the south wall of the chancel in 1532 (the present one is a copy of 1833).
A number of other interesting monuments are to be found in Chelsea Old Church, seven of which date from the sixteenth century. However, the fact that the memory of Thomas More (and possibly his severed head) is enshrined here is its outstanding feature. The whole building was blasted by two land mines in 1941, but because the More Chapel was redeemable the church was rebuilt along original lines.