Vale End, a grand, three-storey townhouse, stands out from the other smart terraces on Chelsea’s Mallord Street. The building’s window frames, guttering and front gate are all painted pale green, while its curved bow windows are almost turret-like. And inside, there are two vast, light-filled artist studios.
Vale End was commissioned in 1913 by the British artist Arthur Croft Mitchell, who lived and worked in the house for 42 years until his death in 1956. The green window frames were requested by Mitchell’s wife, Evelyn ‘Molly’ Ware, to complement the foliage outside.
The house has been owned by the same family since it was built in 1913 and is now on the market for the first time. It has been jointly listed for £9 million with Savills and Farrar.
Born in Birmingham in 1872, Mitchell studied at Slade School of Fine Art under the likes of Frederick Brown, Henry Tonks and Philip Steer, before attending Paris’ prestigious Académie de la Grande Chaudière and exhibiting in the Paris salon. When he came back to Chelsea, he commissioned Vale End as a home and studio.
Mallard Street has a rich artistic history, having been named after the Romantic artist Joseph Mallord William Turner. Mitchell lived next door to the painter Augustus John, who was considered “the most important artist at work in Britain” for a time, according to Tate.
Throughout its history, the street was also home to watercolourist Cecil Arthur Hunt; British artist, poster designer and author Graham Petrie; pianist Louis Kentner; Winnie-the-Pooh author A. A. Milne, and the Irish sculptor and artist John Francis Kavanagh.
Mitchell specialised in interior scenes and historical paintings, but after the Second World War, which had weakened his eyesight, moved more towards landscapes and flower compositions.
He met Evelyn Ware at age 52 at the Chelsea Arts Ball; they married in 1926 and lived in the house together. Their two children were born in the house. Their son, archaeologist and curator Terence Mitchell, lived in the house until his death in 2019 without having changed it at all.
“Vale end has been a physical record of our family history, and a background to the lives of four generations,” says Laura, Arthur Croft Mitchell’s granddaughter.
“When my uncle [Terence] died, the portrait of my grandmother in the moth costume she wore to the Chelsea Arts Ball the night she met my grandfather was still hanging on the wall, along with the many portraits that followed as she became his muse. Letters and photographs of artists’ trips to France and accounts of living through the blitz still filled drawers and cupboards. The toys my uncle and father left behind them when evacuated to America during the Second World War were still in the drawers where my grandmother had packed them away.
“Their unfinished boyhood portraits by my grandfather were still hanging in the studio. The ARW helmet worn by my grandfather was on a hook behind the door, and drawers were still full of paint brushes paint, sketchbooks and paintings, just as he had left them.”
Today, many of the features that Mitchell designed are still in place, alongside the green window frames. The first-floor studio has dramatic full-height windows and blue walls, which were chosen to control the “temperature” of the light in the room.
The studio upstairs, meanwhile, has a vaulted ceiling and skylight to maximise natural light, and both overlook the 36-foot rear garden.
“It is rare in central London, now or even over 100 years [ago], to have had the budget, the land, or the imagination to create a completely bespoke and indulgent home that personifies the artistic yearnings of the man for whom Vale End has been designed,” says Justin Chambers, sales director at Farrar.
“Having walked the streets of Chelsea as in an agent over the last 35 years, there are very few houses that have sparked my interest more from the exterior than this unique and completely one-off property.”
Covering 3,763 square feet, Vale End was originally built as a four-bedroom property with two studios. Today, though, it is arranged as a three-bedroom house with a kitchen, reception room, two bathrooms, cloakroom and the two studio rooms.
In the mid-1990s, one of the original bedrooms, bathroom and dining room at the front of the house were turned into a self-contained maisonette for Terence Mitchell.
Vale End is being marketed as a restoration project to “take this extremely special house into its next phase,” as Dan Carrington at Savills puts it.
Last year, many of Mitchell’s paintings — created in the house’s studios — were auctioned by Bellmans, including some of his floral compositions, his “The Death of Arthur” painting, which was his Royal Academy debut, and his “The Mandolin Player”, which sold for £800.
And after more than 100 years in the Mitchell family, Laura and her three brothers have decided to sell. “For the younger generations, we have all had our months and years living in this lovely space in this green and tranquil street: as students, for work, on gap years, for weekends in London,” she says.
“It is a sad thing to part with something that has been part of our family DNA all our lives, but I, my three brothers and our children are scattered about now, and cannot use it as it should be used.
“We would love for it to become a family home once again, and really hope that its new owners will value it for its light and beauty, and for its tie to Chelsea’s past.”
