Escorts in Sloane Square, SW1W and SW3: who is close, and how soon
Sloane Square is the small paved square at the eastern edge of Chelsea, where Sloane Street comes down from Knightsbridge and meets the road running west into Chelsea and the road running east into Belgravia. It sits on the line between SW1W and SW3, with the Thames a short walk south beyond the lawns of the Royal Hospital.
It is a place to look from as much as a place to be, and this page is for anyone booking escorts in Sloane Square who would like to know where to look. From the middle of the square the streets run out in straight lines, and a walk in almost any direction ends at a different view: stained glass, a Wren front across open grass, four white chimneys over the river. Nobody on the board lives on the square itself, but three live in Chelsea and three more in Belgravia, so Sloane Square escorts come from close by; allow about an hour once the office has confirmed, a little more at rush hour, with her time given in the chat as she sets off and every length on the rates.
On the ground
Sloane Square in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameSW3 2RJ, SW3 2RP, SW1X 9SG, SW1X 9PY.
Nearest stations
Walking timeSloane Square, 1 minute. Victoria, 10 minutes. South Kensington, 12 minutes.
Getting there
SW1W, SW3Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Sloane Square
Who works here
On the board in Sloane Square
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Sloane Square tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
From the fountain
In the middle of the square stands the Venus fountain, a bronze by Gilbert Ledward of 1953: Venus kneels above a basin whose carving shows Charles II and Nell Gwynne on the Thames, a nod to the Chelsea of three centuries ago. Nearby rises the war memorial, a tall stone cross designed by Reginald Blomfield, and the plane trees fill the gaps between.
Stand between the two and the sightlines open. Sloane Street runs dead straight north towards Knightsbridge, the road west narrows away into Chelsea, and the stucco of Belgravia begins at the eastern corner. On the west side, the department store's long curved front of glass, built in the 1930s and one of the first curtain walls in Britain, reflects the whole square back at itself after dark.
Note 03
A river over the platforms
Sloane Square station holds the strangest view on the Underground. High above the tracks, a great iron pipe crosses from one side to the other: it carries the River Westbourne, one of London's lost rivers, on its way from Hampstead to the Thames, and it has done so since the railway was cut through here in the 1860s.
Nothing of the river shows above ground on this stretch. It slips out into the Thames by the Royal Hospital grounds, so the pipe over the platforms is the one place a passer-by can see where it runs. Whatever brings you through the station, it is worth looking up.
Note 04
Wren across the lawns
South of the square stands the Royal Hospital Chelsea, Christopher Wren's home for veteran soldiers, built in the 1680s and still home to the Chelsea Pensioners in their scarlet coats. From the street its brick ranges are handsome enough, but the view that matters is from the river side. On the way down, St Leonard's Terrace looks south across the open green of Burton's Court to the hospital itself, and to the east the hospital's own gardens, once the Ranelagh pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century, fall away towards the water.
There the long front, with its central portico and lantern, faces open lawns that run down towards the Chelsea Embankment, and from the Embankment pavement you look back across the grass at a building that has barely changed its outline in three hundred years. At dusk, with the lamps coming on along the river, it is one of the great set pieces of west London.
Note 05
On Chelsea Bridge
A little further east along the Embankment, Chelsea Bridge gives the widest view in the neighbourhood. Just downstream on the far bank rise the four white chimneys of Battersea Power Station, and on the south side Battersea Park runs along the water, with the Peace Pagoda standing at its river edge. Chelsea Bridge itself, opened in 1937, was the first self-anchored suspension bridge in Britain, and right beside it the Grosvenor railway bridge carries the trains into Victoria, so the view is never quite still.
Upstream, past the park, the Albert Bridge is strung with lights after dark, and the Embankment walk between the two bridges keeps the river beside you the whole way. For a guest who wants air after dinner, it is the obvious direction: south from the square, then along the water.
Note 06
Glass on Sloane Street
The last view is indoors. Holy Trinity Sloane Street, a few steps north of the square, is one of the great churches of the Arts and Crafts movement, built in the late 1880s to designs by John Dando Sedding, and its east window was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris's firm. John Betjeman called it the cathedral of the movement, and standing at the back of the nave, with that tall grid of figures in glass at the far end, it is easy to see why.
Beyond the church, Sloane Street runs on towards Knightsbridge in one long perspective of shopfronts and doorways. To the east, the white terraces of Belgravia begin with Eaton Square, its parallel lines of stucco and pillared porches running away from the square like a stage set built in depth.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Sloane Square
Asked most often
Sloane Square, asked and answered
Can you see the river from Sloane Square?
What is the iron pipe above the platforms at Sloane Square station?
Which bridge is strung with lights after dark?
Where is the best view of the Battersea chimneys?
One zone either way
Next along from Sloane Square
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.