Chelsea. Chelsea is an affluent area of South West London, bounded to the south by the River Thames. Its river frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above Sloane Square Underground station. The modern eastern boundary is Chelsea Bridge Road and the lower half of Sloane Street, including Sloane Square. To the north and northwest, the area fades into Knightsbridge and Brompton, but it is considered that the area north of King's Road as far northwest as Fulham Road is part of Chelsea. The district lies entirely within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, although Chelsea gives its name to nearby locations, such as Chelsea Harbour in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and Chelsea Barracks in the City of Westminster. From 1900, and until the creation of Greater London in 1965, it formed the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea in the County of London. The exclusivity of Chelsea as a result of its high property-prices historically resulted in the coining of the term Sloane Ranger in the 1970s to characterise its residents. Since 2011 Channel 4 has broadcast a reality-television show called Made in Chelsea, documenting the lives of affluent young people living there. Chelsea is home to one of the largest communities of Americans living outside the United States, with 6.53% of Chelsea residents having been born in the US. The word Chelsea originates from the Old English term for landing place for chalk or limestone. Chelsea hosted the Synod of Chelsea in 787 AD. The first record of the Manor of Chelsea precedes the Domesday Book and records the fact that Thurstan, governor of the King's Palace during the reign of Edward the Confessor, gave the land to the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. Abbot Gervace subsequently assigned the manor to his mother, and it passed into private ownership. By 1086 the Domesday Book records that Chelsea was in the hundred of Ossulstone in Middlesex, with Edward of Salisbury as tenant-in-chief. King Henry VIII acquired the manor of Chelsea from Lord Sandys in 1536; Chelsea Manor Street is still extant. Two of King Henry's wives, Catherine Parr and Anne of Cleves, lived in the Manor House; Princess Elizabeth-the future Queen Elizabeth I-resided there; and Thomas More lived more or less next door at Beaufort House. In 1609 James I established a theological college, King James's College at Chelsey on the site of the future Royal Hospital Chelsea, which Charles II founded in 1682. By 1694, Chelsea-always a popular location for the wealthy, and once described as a village of palaces-had a population of 3,000. Even so, Chelsea remained rural and served London to the east as a market garden, a trade that continued until the 19th-century development boom which caused the final absorption of the district into the metropolis. The street crossing that was known as Little Chelsea, Park Walk, linked Fulham Road to King's Road and continued to the Thames and local ferry down Lover's Lane, renamed Milmans Street in the 18th century. King's Road, named for Charles II, recalls the King's private road from St James's Palace to Fulham, which was maintained until the reign of George IV. One of the more important buildings in King's Road, the former Chelsea Town Hall, popularly known as Chelsea Old Town hall-a fine neo-classical building-contains important frescoes. Part of the building contains the Chelsea Public Library. Almost opposite stands the former Odeon Cinema, now Habitat, with its iconic facade which carries high upon it a large sculptured medallion of the now almost-forgotten William Friese-Greene, who claimed to have invented celluloid film and cameras in the 1880s before any subsequent patents. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the better residential portion of Chelsea is the eastern, near Sloane Street and along the river; the western, extending north to Fulham Road, is mainly a poor quarter. This is no longer the case, although housing trusts and Council property do remain. The areas to the west also attract very high prices. This former fashionable village was absorbed into London during the eighteenth century.