CHELSEA PARK, on the same side of the way with the Queen’s Elm public-house, and distant about a furlong from it, as seen from the road, appears a noble structure with a magnificent portico. [Picture: Chelsea Park Portico] The ground now called Chelsea Park belonged, with an extensive tract of which it formed the northern part, to the famous Sir Thomas More, and in his time was unenclosed, and termed “the Sand Hills.” It received the present name in 1625, when the Lord-Treasurer Cranfield (Earl of Middlesex) surrounded with a brick wall about thirty-two acres, which he had purchased in 1620 from Mr. Blake. In 1717 Chelsea Park, which extended from the Fulham to the King’s Road, was estimated at forty acres, and belonged to the Marquis of Wharton, with whom, when appointed in 1709 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Addison went over as Secretary. It subsequently became the scene of a joint-stock company speculation under a patent granted in 1718 to John Appletree, Esq., for producing raw silk of the growth of England, and for raising a fund for carrying on the same. This undertaking was divided into shares of £5 each, of which £1 was paid down. Proposals were published, a subscription-book opened, in which several hundred names were soon entered; a deed of trust executed and enrolled in Chancery; directors were chosen by the subscribers for managing the affairs of the Company; and, Chelsea Park being thought a proper soil for the purpose and in a convenient situation, a lease was taken of it for 122 years. Here upwards of 2000 mulberry-trees were soon planted, and extensive edifices erected for carrying on the work: this number of trees was, however, but a small part of what the company intended to plant if they were successful. In the following year Mr. Henry Barham, F.R.S., who was probably a member of the company, published ‘An Essay on the Silk Worm,’ in which he thinks “all objections and difficulties against this glorious undertaking are shown to be mere phantoms and trifles.” The event, however, proved that the company met with difficulties of a real and formidable nature; for though the expectation of this gentleman, who questioned not that in the ensuing year they should produce a considerable quantity of raw silk, may have been partly answered, the undertaking soon began to decline, and, in the course of a few years, came to nothing. It must, however, be admitted that the violent stock-jobbing speculations of the year 1720, which involved the shares of all projects of this nature, might have produced many changes among the proprietors, and contributed to derange the original design. However, from that period to the present time, no effort has been made to cultivate the silkworm in this country as a mercantile speculation, although individuals have continued to rear it with success as an object of curiosity.