Therapia Road is located within the county of Greater London which is in the London region of the UK. 3.95 miles South East from the centre of London.
Thérapia (Tarabya en turc) est le nom d'un district du côté Européen du Bosphore.
The Bosphorus is the strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara (or Marmora) and marks, with the Dardanelles, the southern limit between the Asian and European continents. It is 30 kilometers long and 698 to 3,000 meters wide. It separates the Anatolian (Asia) and the European parts of Istanbul.
The Bosphorus and Therapia
Therapia was always an important region for the United Kingdom.
In the nineteenth century, the village of Therapia, located about 15 kilometers northwest of Pera, had become a fashionable seaside resort due to the cool breeze of the Black Sea.
In 1818, Adam Neale, the embassy’s physician, wrote that he had ‘frequently been rowed from Pera to Terapia, a distance of ten miles, against the current’.
In 1829, Sultan Mahmut II gave to the British ambassador, Sir Robert Gordon, the use of a house at Therapia. But some years later, it transpired that this property had originally belonged to some Catholic Armenians and was obtained illegally by the Turkish authorithies. British government therefore handed the property back to the Sultan.
On 24 May 1847 in honour of Queen Victoria’s birthday, Sultan Abdülmecid (Abdulmedjid) presented the embassy with another site at Therapia, comprising four timber seashore villas and some disused factory/warehouse buildings. Lieutenant Glascott of the Royal Navy surveyed the site and produced a fine pen and ink plan. The granted site comprised about 3.5 hectares
Title of Glascott’s 1847 survey.
There was a wooden kiosk belonging to the sultan Abdulmedjid at Therapia. During the Crimean war, in early 1854, the Sultan assigned this kiosk to the English naval army to be used as a naval hospital. At the beginning, the number of beds was as low as 40 but later it was raised to 100-150 with the acquisition of a neighbouring building. It is likely that Florence Nightingale visited this hospital in the summer of 1855. During the Crimean War, the village of Therapia itself became a popular English resort, especially with the wives of senior officers fighting in the Crimea. Until its closure in june 1856, 1775 patients regarded incurable on their own ships were treated with success and only 22 out of 230 operations proved fatal.
During the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz the wooden building of the former naval hospital was demolished to be rebuilt in stone but was never build again. Sultan Abdulhamid II, the successor of Abdülaziz, in may 1880 granted this site to tha German emperor Wilhelm I. German government built in this site a new summer embassy between 1887-1900.
German summer embassy built at the same place as the English naval hospital
Another reason why Therapia is an important district for United Kingdom is the fact that there was also an English cemetery (Therapia Crimean Cemetery) to which officiers and soldiers who died in the sultan’s mansion in Therapia were burried. Later this cemetery was transported to the Haidar Pasha Cemetery.
To the memory of the officers and men of the Royal Navy and marines buried at Therapia, erected by their countrywomen AD 1853
The cross on the memorial stone does not exist today
A gravestone of the old cemetery of Therapia transferred to the cemetery of Haidar Pasha
In 1856, Canning (Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, KG, GCB, PC, 1786 – 1880, was a British diplomat and politician, best known as the longtime British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1841 to 1858) complained about the unsightly old factory buildings that had never been demolished and he thought the best solution would be to build a new summer residence on their site.
In 1867 Sir Henry George Elliot GCB (1817-1907) was appointed ambassador to Constantinople. He continued this task until 1877 and the construction of the British summer embassy at Therapia began during this period. The new building was occupied in May 1870.
A 1903 postcard view of the British summer embassy at Therapia
A 1905 postcard view of the British summer embassy at Therapia
This magnificent residence was burned down on December 13, 1911, probably due to a domestic accident or an oversight and was never re-built.
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