Cheyne Walk (pronounced Chaynee) is the most historic street in Chelsea, a bit of "picturesque old London". Most of the houses were built in the early eighteenth century. Before the construction in the nineteenth century of the busy Thames Embankment, which now runs in front of it, the houses fronted the River Thames. East of the Walk are the gardens of the Apothecaries' Company, with their famous cedars.

Many famous people have lived (and continue to live) in the Walk.

• Keith Richards lived at number 3.
• George Eliot spent the last three weeks of her life at Number 4.
• David Lloyd George lived at Number 10.
• The landscape painter Cecil Gordon Lawson lived at number 15 (a number of his works still hang there).
• also the engraver Henry Thomas Ryall.
• also the Allason family, well-known for their political and literary influence
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived at number 16
• AND Algernon Charles Swinburne
• Sir Hans Sloane’s manor house, demolished in 1760, stood at numbers 19–26
• James McNeill Whistler lived at numbers 21, 96 and 101 (at different times, of course)
• Mick Jagger lived at number 48
• Elizabeth Gaskell was born at number 93.
• Sir Marc Brunel who designed the Thames Tunnel lived at number 98
• As did his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel
• Sir Philip Steer lived at number 109.
• J.M.W. Turner died at number 119 in 1851.