Visit to the Carlyle House

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Mark took a day off work on 4 October. We decided to visit Carlyle’s House in Chelsea in the afternoon. It took 15 minutes from South Kensington on foot. We walked through the charming residential area with several plaques of celebrities, e.g. Leigh Hunt (Essayist & Poet).

The Carlyle House was home for Thomas Carlyle and his wife, and it is managed by the National Trust. I wanted to go to the toilet, and I used the one in the garden. It was the privilege to use the Victorian style toilet. We were invited to stroll through the Drawing Rooms, bedrooms, dressing room, dining room, and kitchen. It was interesting to see the 2nd floor of the house has been used by the custodian. All rooms and staircases were furnished with floral wallpapers, authentic Victorian carpets, cushions, tablecloths, decorated with intricate porcelain and glasses, collections of books, memorabilia, and oil paintings and sketches, and laden with the documents related to the history of Chelsea and the Carlyle’s time, and copies of classic novels and biographies. The Carlyle’s House was visited by Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, George Elliot. All of the room showed an authentic, evocative atmosphere and gave us an insight of Victorian literary society.

We walked around the little garden and saw and the statue of Thomas Carlyle on the park of Cheyne Walk.

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