“We have been deployed as armed forces overseas, to defend whatever we needed to defend,” says one veteran who lives next door to Chelsea football stadium. “But who is defending us?”
Dozens of British veterans from the Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions now fear homelessness — after the building their community has been in for more than 100 years was sold to Chelsea Football Club for redevelopment last October.
The row is another headache for Chelsea under Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital. They bought the club for £4.25 billion in May 2022, leading to several bust-ups with neighbours.
David Knight, who served in Bosnia in the Nineties, proudly gives a tour of the first-floor Stoll flat he’s been in for three years. It has a photograph remembering his infantry training on the wall, and a view of Stamford Bridge out of the window. He has been homeless before, and breaks down as he talks about the idea of losing his house again.
Knight says he feels safe at Stoll. “We live a posh area. They’re not going to be able to rehouse 130 people in the borough — if they do it’s a miracle,” he says.
The Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions was established in 1915 to provide homes for soldiers returning from war. Most of its 157 flats are home to dozens of veterans, who served around the world.
Last year, Chelsea had a reported £80 million bid accepted for the site, meaning only 20 of the flats will remain. The rest will be moved to other sites, but they don’t yet know where. In a residents’ survey, 92 per cent said they were against the sale.
Alan Lomax, 73, who lost his teeth in riots on tour of Northern Ireland in the late 1970s, recently got over cancer. He says he’s lived in the Stoll buildings for 26 years, and that the recent uncertainty over his home has brought back the PTSD he first got while on duty. “They don’t know how much damage they are doing” he says.
Baktash Qurban, 34, served with British forces in Afghanistan and had to leave to escape the Taliban, will now lose the only stable home he has known since moving to London, and fears instability will upset his upcoming Masters course. I feel a part of a family of military veterans here… but Stoll wants to break that bond”.
Andy Daniels, 62, who was in the Royal Green Jackets, and suffers from PTSD and anxiety, says he fears being moved to a hostel. “What they could do is to find a complex so that we could be together as a community, instead of trying to break us up,” he says. “The public should be aware that people here fought for the country... only to be fobbed off.”
Geoffrey Reed, 65, is upset with Stoll’s behaviour and frustrated that they have let the building become rundown — the reason they say it’s time to move. Stoll says refurbishing would cost £10 million, or £25 million for new buildings. When previous owner Roman Abramovich had expansion plans, he pledged to build a tower to house the veterans. Boehly and Clearlake Capital have no such plan.
Hammersmith and Fulham council deputy leader Ben Coleman says the veterans have been an “afterthought”. Having toured lots of council housing in the area, he questions the idea that the flats are rundown. He’s also frustrated at Stoll’s claim that the sale will help future veterans. “It’s sort of absurd, but Stoll is putting hypothetical future veterans in front of veterans who are living here now,” he says.
Coleman praises Chelsea for listening to the veterans’ concerns of late, and says that he and the council are hoping that there can be a pause in the sale. “I’ve been very clear that making veterans homeless is a red line,” he says.
Will Campbell-Wroe, Stoll chief executive, says that he is aware of how unsettling the move has been for the veterans. “We understand that the situation we’re in is causing some additional anxiety for our residents,” he says.
He adds that while the charity’s legal responsibility is only to those that have been with Stoll more than five years, he pledges that “no one will be made homeless as part of this process”. He says he hopes to announce new homes in Zone One or the borough soon.
During their reign, the blues men’s team haven’t had much luck on the pitch, spending over £1 billion on players, but languishing in the middle of the table.
Meanwhile, the vets of Oswald Stoll are not the only people who are upset with the new owners. Kate Reardon, a journalist and former editor of society magazine Tatler, lives a few steps from the stadium. She has been exasperated by some of the recent changes, like many of her neighbours.
Last year, the new owners tried to create an all-day music venue on the concourse at Stamford Bridge. The club also submitted licensing plans that would have allowed it to serve alcohol in the marquee from 10am to 11pm every day of the week. However, 350 locals objected, leading to an angry residents’ meeting, and Chelsea had to back down.
The recent changes are also set to close a medical centre on the Stoll site, which some feared could leave 6,500 locals without a GP. After conversations with Stoll and the NHS, the practice now seems likely to be replaced.
Another bone of contention is the changing use of a local gym, once used by Hugh Grant and Sebastian Coe, to rip out the fitness studio at the health club next door and replace it with a bar called The Rose and Ball.
Reardon fears that the new Chelsea owners have bigger plans for change. “They’re just going to stifle us in the short term, and then steamroller us in the long term,” she says.
She says that while people might see Chelsea residents as out of touch, she has struggles just like everyone else. “I’m a single mother of eight-year-old twins, it’s hard enough trying to get them to sleep on a school night when Chelsea are playing, but we handle it. Just imagine what hell it will be if the club succeeds with their post-match entertainment or music venue plans.”
Recently, portaloos have been installed in nearby streets during match days, which Chelsea say is for the benefit of residents, but many object to. Late last year, a fleet of cars blocked up the road late last year when US Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband Douglas Emhoff came to watch a match. Chelsea say they are holding regular residents meetings, but not everyone is satisfied their voices are being heard.
Chelsea are in a bit of a bind. Last year, Tottenham overtook them as the richest club in London thanks to the earning power of their new ground. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium holds well over 60,000 people, while Stamford Bridge can just fit in 40,000. Spurs can top up their earnings with lucrative concerts — including Beyoncé and Lady Gaga — while Chelsea cannot. Other London clubs, like Fulham and Crystal Palace, are expanding.
The new owners think there is the chance to make huge sums at Chelsea. In 2022, Clearlake Capital’s José E Feliciano said the club could double its revenue, adding: “the potential for value creation is very significant”.
But one thing stopping their progress is the ownership of the Chelsea stadium premises. For over 30 years, a group of fans called Chelsea Pitch Owners PLC have owned Stamford Bridge, with three-quarters needed to agree to a move.
Many fans think that instead of shifting location, Chelsea will stay where they are and expand — just as Abramovich once had plans to build a bigger stadium on the Stamford Bridge site. One thing seems certain: if Chelsea do expand, the Oswald Stoll veterans won’t be next door to see it.
