The Carlyles' House, in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, central London, was the home of the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane from 1834 until his death. The home of these writers was purchased by public subscription and placed in the care of the Carlyle's House Memorial Trust in 1895. They opened the house to the public and maintained it until 1936, when control of the property was assumed by the National Trust, inspired by co-founder Octavia Hill's earlier pledge of support for the house. It became a Grade II listed building in 1954 and is open to the public as a historic house museum.
The Carlyles in residence
left|thumb|A Chelsea Interior by Robert Scott Tait, 1857
In the early months of 1834, Carlyle had decided to move from Craigenputtock, the couple's residence in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, to London. He arrived in London in May, seeking his friend Leigh Hunt, whom he had asked to keep an eye out for a likely property. Carlyle, discovering that Hunt had done nothing of the kind, found a promising house himself, very close to the Hunt residence in Chelsea. The Carlyles moved into 5 Cheyne Row on 10 June 1834; the street address was changed to 24 in 1877. The house became central to Victorian intellectual life, a place of pilgrimage for literati, scientists, clergymen and political figures from all over Europe and North America. Carlyle did most of his writing there from The French Revolution onward. The house has a small walled garden which is preserved much as it was when Thomas and Jane lived there; the fig tree still produces fruit.
The house may have been the model for the Hilberrys' house in Virginia Woolf's Night and Day (1919).
The Carlyles' house today
The house has been owned and managed by the National Trust since 1934. In 2026, the National Trust changed the name from [Thomas] Carlyle's House to the Carlyles' House, to signal the important role played by Jane Carlyle.
Stanford and Thea Holme
The theatre producer Stanford Holme became curator of the house and moved there with his wife, the actress Thea Holme, in 1959. She took up writing, beginning with a book about the lives of Thomas and Jane Carlyle at the house, The Carlyles at Home (1965).