Kings Road

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For other uses see King's Road

Kings Road

Kings Road, known popularly as The Kings Road or The KR, is a major, well-known street in west London, England.

It runs for just under 2 miles through Chelsea, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, from Sloane Square in the east (on the border with Belgravia and Knightsbridge) and through the Moore Park Estate on the border of Chelsea and Fulham opposite Stamford Bridge. Shortly after crossing Stanley bridge the road passes a slight kink at the junction with Waterford Road in Fulham, where it then becomes the New Kings Road, continuing all the way to Putney Bridge; its western end is located in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

During the hippie and punk eras, it was a major centre for the counterculture, but is now gentrified. It is effectively Chelsea's high street, and is one of the most fashionable shopping streets in London. It has recently been criticised for looking like every other high street in the United Kingdom, having lost its character and just having high street chains. Famous boutiques were Granny Takes a Trip and Malcolm McLaren's shop SEX (later Seditionaries).

Kings Road derives its name from its original function as a private road used by Charles II to travel to Kew. It remained a private royal road until 1830, but people with the right connections were able to obtain a pass to use it. Some of the houses date from the early 18th century. Thomas Arne lived at No. 215 and is believed to have composed "Rule Britannia" there. Ellen Terry lived in the same house from 1904–1920, and is commemorated by a blue plaque.

In 1876, the world's first artificial ice rink, the Glaciarium, opened just off the Kings Road, and later in the year it relocated to a building on the street.

Kings Road was home in the 1960s to the Chelsea Drugstore (originally a chemist, that is to say a pharmacy, with a highly stylized chrome-and-neon soda fountain upstairs, later a public house; more recently the site became a McDonalds) and in the 1970s to Malcolm McLaren's boutique, Let It Rock, which was later renamed SEX in 1974, and then Seditionaries in 1977.

"Kings Road" is the title of a song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from their 1981 album Hard Promises.

484 Kings Road was the headquarters of Swan Song Records, the record company owned by Led Zeppelin. The premises was vacated by them following the closure of the company in 1983.

Kings Road is also notable as the site of the first ever UK branch of Starbucks which opened here in 1999.

And it also inspired the formation of a popular London-based cricket club. The King's Road Cricket and Social Club - or KRCSC - was formed in 2007.

[edit] Transport

Tube

At the eastern end of the long street is Sloane Square, whilst Fulham Broadway lies at the western end, on the boundary between Chelsea and Fulham. The Kings Road, and the area of Chelsea as a whole, is known for having poor links to the London Underground, however the proposed Chelsea-Hackney line would rectify this with the construction of a new Chelsea tube station.

Bus

Buses 11, 19, 22, 49, 211, 319, 328, and C3 all go down the Kings Road, yet most of these turn off the street at one point or another. The 11 and the 22 are the only routes which run down the entirety of the Kings Road.