Chances are if you have ever been to London you have not walked down Ebury Bridge Road in Pimlico. Which is a district within the City of Westminster and not far from Buckingham Palace and Victoria Station. It is one of those London streets that Cabbies, Bus Drivers and locals know as a local artery one that gets you from here to there. Once the Chelsea Guard Barracks which was established between 1855 and 1861 and were designed by George Morgan and were on the road but hav since been torn down to make way for very posh apartments that no soldier in the Welsh or Grenadier Guards could afford.
The building that I was raised in for several years in my young life was at 183 Ebury Bridge Road, it was called Wellington Flats and was part of the Chelsea Gardens apartment building. It was a dark brown brick building that always smelled musty and sometimes it smelled garbage barges. Identified by their colorful yellow superstructures that were towed from the Grosvenor canal behind the buildings down the Thames to sea where the rubbish was dumped. The trash collection and barges ended in the 1990’s and with that the Grosvenor Canal was the very last commercial canal to operate in London.
As a little boy my mum and grand-mum would take me across the street to see the guards at the Barracks. At little known fact is that the Guards at the Barracks were the ones on duty at Buckingham Palace, so if you wanted to see the guards in their parade uniforms you could go down to the barracks back gate and watch them leave to go down to the palace. Unfortunately now that the barracks have been decommissioned that is no longer an option.
So this site is my little paver in the big internet highway. Enjoy.