Lying in an unknown grave in the churchyard of St Nicholas is the playwright CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, stabbed to death during a brawl in a Deptford tavern in 1593, aged just 29.
On the pillars of the gates to St Nicholas there are two large skulls lying on crossbones with wreaths, symbolising victory over death. Local legend has it that Captain Henry Morgan, who sailed from Deptford to terrorise the Spanish Main, used these skulls as the model for the ‘skull and crossbones’ ensign.
Greenwich Town
Mean Town
GREENWICH, SEEN FROM across the River Thames, was said to be Sir Christopher Wren’s favourite view, and indeed, Greenwich is a special place. It is a royal cradle. It is where time begins and ends. It is where East meets West. According to the widely travelled Daniel Defoe, Greenwich in 1720 possessed ‘fine buildings … the most beautiful river in Europe, the best air, best prospect and the best conversation in Europe’. Although modern industrial London has rolled past in its inexorable march east, somehow it seems to have missed Greenwich, and the little town remains an emerald jewel on the Thames, and a worthy World Heritage Site.
Greenwich Palace
Royal Celebrations
HUMPHREY, DUKE OF Gloucester, Henry V’s brother, inherited land at Greenwich in 1427 and built himself ‘one of the finest houses in England’ on the river there, called Bella Court. Humphrey was something of a scholar and he accumulated THE FIRST GREAT PRIVATE LIBRARY IN ENGLAND at Bella Court. When he died he left the library to Oxford University, where it formed the nucleus of the Bodleian Library.
In the next 200 years Greenwich would play host to a cavalcade of royal births, deaths, marriages and celebrations. Henry VI and his bride Margaret of Anjou honeymooned at Greenwich and found it so agreeable that they made it an official royal residence, naming it Placentia, the ‘Pleasant Place’. In 1465 Edward IV’s wife Elizabeth Woodville gave birth at Greenwich to Elizabeth of York, future wife of Henry VII, and in 1500 Henry had the house enlarged and made into a palace. His second son, the future Henry VIII, was born here in 1491.
Henry VIII spent much of his time at Greenwich, and in 1516 his first daughter Mary was born here, with Cardinal Wolsey as godfather. That same year THE FIRST MASQUERADE SEEN IN ENGLAND was performed at the palace. In 1533 Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth I here, and it was during a tournament in the park at Greenwich that Anne supposedly dropped her handkerchief as a signal to her lover, a gesture that was spotted by Henry and which ultimately led Anne to her doom at Tower Green in 1536. The sickly young Edward VI died at Greenwich in 1553.
Greenwich was Elizabeth I’s favourite summer residence, and it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh placed his cape over a puddle so that she wouldn’t get her feet wet. And it was at Greenwich in 1587 that Elizabeth signed the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots.
James I made Greenwich over to his wife Anne of Denmark, and in 1616 Inigo Jones was commissioned to build a house for her at Greenwich. Anne died before the house was finished, but it was passed on to Prince Charles’s wife Henrietta Maria and completed in 1635 as THE FIRST PALLADIAN HOUSE IN BRITAIN. Inside there is a particularly fine ‘tulip’ staircase. The Queen’s House, as it is still known, is now part of the NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM.
After the Restoration Charles II set about having the palace rebuilt, but ran out of money with only one part completed. William and Mary preferred Kensington Palace, and Mary, having been horrified by the awful plight of the wounded after the Battle of La Hogue in 1692, ordered that Greenwich should be completed as a seamen’s hospital. Her one request was that that the view of the Queen’s House should not be obstructed. For this reason Sir Christopher Wren and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor designed pairs of separate buildings with the Queen’s House at the centre of the vista, acknowledged as one of the great architectural panoramas of Britain.
Greenwich contains some of the finest work not just of Wren and Hawksmoor but of Inigo Jones, John Webb and Sir John Vanbrugh as well. While Vanbrugh was working on the hospital, he built himself a fortress-like house on the crest of the hill, now called Vanbrugh’s Castle.
The Painted Hall
Largest Painting
THE PAINTED HALL in the King William block has a marvellous painted ceiling by Sir James Thornhill showing William and Mary bestowing ‘Peace’ and ‘Liberty’ on Europe. It is THE LARGEST PAINTING IN BRITAIN and took Thornhill 20 years to finish, which he finally did in 1727. LORD NELSON lay in state in the Painted Hall in 1806, in a coffin made from the timbers of the L’Orient, the French flagship at the Battle of the Nile. The L’Orient was commanded by Admiral Casabianca, who had his ten-year-old son on board with him, famous as the boy who stood on the burning deck.
The Painted Hall is balanced across the courtyard by the ornate QUEEN’S CHAPEL, originally designed by Wren and then re-designed, after a fire, by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart. The public can attend services here, and the chapel was used as the setting for one of the weddings in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich closed in 1869, and in 1873 the Royal Naval College took over. Today the complex is part of the University of Greenwich, and has good public access.
Royal Observatory
Zero Hour
OVERLOOKING GREENWICH FROM the summit of the park, with one of the great views of London, is the ROYAL OBSERVATORY, THE FIRST OBSERVATORY IN ENGLAND. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built in 1675. The first Astronomer Royal, appointed by Charles II, was JOHN FLAMSTEED. He was succeeded in 1720 by EDMOND HALLEY, who charted the course of his famous comet here but died before seeing his calculations proved correct.
In 1833 a time ball, THE FIRST VISUAL TIME SIGNAL IN THE WORLD, was placed on top of the observatory, and ever since that day the time ball has been raised at 12.55 and dropped precisely at 13.00, so that ships on the river can set their clocks accurately. The time ball was linked by BRITAIN’S FIRST TELEGRAPH CABLE to a similar time ball at Walmer, on the south coast, for the benefit of shipping in the English Channel.
The WORLD’S FIRST WEATHER FORECASTS were issued in 1848 by JAMES GLAISHER of the Greenwich Royal Observatory, for inclusion in the following day’s Daily News. They were based on Glaisher’s analysis of observations taken at a number of meteorological stations around the country and telegraphed through to London.
In 1884 a conference in Washington voted that Greenwich should be the location of the PRIME MERIDIAN, or 0 degrees longitude, for two reasons. First, the observatory’s work had been instrumental in calculating new methods of navigation and time-keeping, and second, a large proportion of the world’s shipping at that time passed through the Port of London. Hence EAST MEETS WEST AT GREENWICH and THE WORLD SET ITS CLOCKS BY GREENWICH MEAN TIME.
Running through the courtyard of the observatory is a line marking the Prime Meridian, and a lot of fun can be had by straddling the line – placing one foot in the Western Hemisphere and one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere. At night a laser light shines out from the observatory along the line of the Prime Meridian, which crosses the river near Blackwall.
The ‘pips’ were first broadcast by the BBC on 5 February 1924, provided directly from the Royal Observatory to the BBC’s studio at Savoy Hill.
In 1957 the Royal Observatory staff moved to Herstmonceaux in Sussex, to escape the pollution of London, and in the late 1990s to Cambridge.
FLAMSTEED HOUSE, Sir Christopher Wren’s original observatory building, contains LONDON’S ONLY PUBLIC CAMERA OBSCURA.
The 28-inch (710 mm) refracting telescope at Greenwich Observatory is THE LARGEST OF ITS KIND IN BRITAIN and the seventh largest in the world.
St Alfege
Hero’s Rest
GREENWICH’S PARISH CHURCH of St Alfege was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1714 as one of Queen Anne’s proposed ‘Fifty New Churches’. It sits on the site of an ancient church built where Archbishop Alfege was murdered by the Danes in 1012. Henry VIII was baptised in the previous church, wher
e THOMAS TALLIS (1505–85) was the organist. Tallis, the father of English church music, is buried here.
Lying in the new church is GENERAL JAMES WOLFE, the victor of Quebec, who was a resident of Greenwich and was buried here in 1759, after lying in state in his home, Macartney House. There is a statue erected in his memory on top of the hill in Greenwich Park, by the observatory. The future GORDON OF KHARTOUM was baptised here in 1833.
Cutty Sark
Tea Time
ON THE WATERFRONT at Greenwich is the Cutty Sark, THE LAST REMAINING TEA CLIPPER IN EXISTENCE. She was launched at Dumbarton on the River Clyde in 1869, and her name comes from the short skirt or ‘cutty sark’ worn by the young witch Nannie in Robert Burns’s poem, Tam O’Shanter. She never became the fastest tea clipper in the world, losing out to the Thermopylae, but for ten years she was THE FASTEST SHIP ON THE LONDON TO AUSTRALIA WOOL ROUTE, on one occasion sailing from Sydney to London in a record time of 73 days. The Cutty Sark was brought to Greenwich in 1922. In May 2007 much of the ship was destroyed in a fire, but fortunately half of her timbers, including the masts, were in temporary storage elsewhere and the Cutty Sark is being fully restored.
Millennium Dome
The Biggest Dome in the World
THE MILLENNIUM DOME, built on the Prime Meridian to celebrate the new millennium, was completed just in time, in June 1999. It is THE LARGEST DOME IN THE WORLD and also THE LARGEST SINGLE-ROOFED STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD. At its highest point the Dome is 164 ft (50 m) high and is held aloft by high-strength steel cables attached to 12 steel masts, each 328 ft (100 m) high. The Dome featured in the pre-title sequence of the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, and in 2000 was at the centre of a real-life James Bond scenario, when police foiled an attempt to steal £200 million worth of diamonds from an exhibition there. The thieves crashed through the wall of the Dome in a bulldozer, setting off smoke bombs before trying to remove the diamonds with sledgehammers and a nail gun, but the police had been tipped off and were waiting for them. The dome is now the O2 entertainment complex.
Blackheath
Sporting Firsts
BLACKHEATH IS ONE of London’s breeziest and most exhilarating open spaces. It lies on the main London to Canterbury and Dover route and has been the scene of many historic gatherings. In 1381 the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, WAT TYLER, mustered his men on the heath to hear the fiery priest JOHN BALL deliver his radical sermon, ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?’ Jack Cade camped here in 1450 before marching to overthrow London, and Henry VII defeated a band of Cornish rebels on the heath in 1497.
Henry VIII first set eyes on Anne of Cleves on Blackheath in 1540, expecting to see the beauty depicted in Holbein’s flattering portrait, and instead found himself gazing in horror at the ‘Mare of Flanders’.
James I founded THE FIRST GOLF CLUB IN ENGLAND here, in 1608, one of a number of sporting firsts that Blackheath can claim. The BLACKHEATH RUGBY CLUB, formed by old boys from Blackheath Proprietary School in 1858, is THE OLDEST OPEN RUGBY CLUB IN THE WORLD, and the BLACKHEATH HOCKEY CLUB, also formed by old boys from Blackheath Proprietary School, this time in 1840, but first recorded in 1861, is THE OLDEST HOCKEY CLUB IN THE WORLD.
Salem House, the school where Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield had such a terrible time, was modelled on one of Blackheath’s many schools. The future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli went to school at Blackheath, as did England’s first woman doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who attended an establishment run by the poet Robert Browning’s Aunt Louisa.
Blackheath has a number of notable buildings to show. THE PARAGON, to the south of the Heath, is a unique crescent of seven houses joined by Tuscan colon-nades, designed by Michael Searles and built between 1794 and 1807. A few hundred yards further to the east is MORDEN COLLEGE, one of Sir Christopher Wren’s most ravishing accomplishments, built for Sir John Morden as a home for distressed merchants. The College is still run as a charity today.
DONALD MCGILL, the cartoonist of saucy postcards, lived at No. 5 Bennett Park.
Charlton
Surprising Splendour
CHARLTON HOUSE IS one of the finest Jacobean houses in England and one of London’s loveliest surprises. It sits at the heart of old Charlton village, up on the hill, surrounded by trees and lawns, and was built between 1608 and 1612 for SIR ADAM NEWTON, tutor to James I’s eldest son Prince Henry. In the grounds is THE OLDEST MULBERRY TREE IN BRITAIN, planted in 1608 at the suggestion of King James, who wanted to develop an English silk industry. For this purpose James planted an entire mulberry garden where Buckingham Palace now stands. Alas, the climate wasn’t condusive and they were the wrong type of mulberry tree for breeding silkworms. Near to the Charlton mulberry is an orangery, thought to be by Inigo Jones, that in needier times was made into a public lavatory, no longer in use.
The Paragon, Blackheath
Morden College
Charlton House is council owned and open to the public.
Across the road in a quiet corner is ST LUKE’S CHURCH, where the builder of Charlton House, Sir Adam Newton, lies buried. Here also are SIR WILLIAM CONGREVE, inventor of the Congreve Rocket that so terrified the French at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, and THE ONLY BRITISH PRIME MINISTER TO BE ASSASSINATED, SPENCER PERCEVAL (1762–1812), shot down outside the House of Commons chamber by a bankrupt financier, John Bellingham.
MARYON PARK, a little way down the hill, featured memorably in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 cult film Blow Up, starring David Hemmings.
Woolwich
Gunners
WOOLWICH WAS SECOND only to Deptford as a Royal Dockyard. Its first commission was for Henry VIII’s flagship THE GREAT HARRY, which remained THE LARGEST SHIP EVER BUILT for more than 200 years. Woolwich’s other claim to fame is as the home of WOOLWICH ARSENAL, established in 1695 and England’s major weapons storehouse up until 1967, when the Royal Ordnance factory closed.
In 1886 workers at the arsenal formed a football team called Dial Square, which became the Woolwich Reds after they were gifted some red shirts, and then the Woolwich Arsenal. In 1913 the team relocated to north London as the ARSENAL. The ROYAL ARTILLERY BAND, formed at the Woolwich barracks in 1762, is BRITAIN’S OLDEST ORCHESTRA. The word orchestra comes from the Greek word for the area between the stage and the audience which was normally filled by singers or musicians.
The Woolwich Free Ferry has been operating since 1889, but there has been some sort of ferry here since the 14th century. Today it provides a useful link between the North and South Circular roads.
Thames Barrier
Eighth Wonder of the World
THE THAMES BARRIER, which spans the Woolwich Reach, is 1,716 ft (523 m) across and is THE WORLD’S SECOND LARGEST MOVABLE FLOOD BARRIER, after the Oosterscheldekering in the Netherlands. It became operational in 1982 and doom-mongers say it will be obsolete by 2030, when sea levels will have risen to such an extent that it will no longer be possible to protect London. The barrier consists of ten separate movable gates, positioned end-to-end across the river, two drop gates at either end, and six central gates that pivot between concrete piers housing the operating equipment. The four largest central navigation channels are 200 ft (61 m) wide to allow access for large ships. When not in use, the rising gates lie in curved, recessed concrete sills in the riverbed. The decision to close the barrier is taken by the Barrier Controller in consultation with the Met Office and the barrier’s own computer analysts. The Thames Barrier is just the largest component in the Thames flood defences which include smaller barriers at several locations along the river.
The story of the barrier is told at the Thames Barrier Visitors Centre on the south bank between Charlton and Woolwich.
Well, I never knew this
ABOUT
GREENWICH
The band DIRE STRAITS was formed in Deptford in 1977.
Deptford has LONDON’S LARGEST BUDDHIST COMMUNITY.
In 1975 the FIRST MCDONALD’S H
AMBURGER RESTAURANT IN BRITAIN opened in Woolwich.
Greenwich was the subject of BRITAIN’S FIRST PAY TV CHANNEL, GREENWICH CABLEVISION, which began broadcasting from a studio in Plumstead on 3 July 1972. The first programme was about everyday life in Greenwich.
GREENWICH PARK, laid out in 1433, is THE OLDEST PARK IN LONDON and is the starting-point for the London Marathon.
In 1836 LONDON’S FIRST RAILWAY, the LONDON TO GREENWICH RAILWAY, was built through Deptford on a viaduct of 878 arches, 3 miles (4.8 km) long, that was one of the wonders of the world at the time. The London to Greenwich Railway was THE FIRST RAILWAY COMPANY TO ISSUE SEASON TICKETS, in 1843.
In 1843 THE WORLD’S FIRST ARTIFICIAL FERTILISER was manufactured at Deptford Creek by JOHN BENNET LAWES, who would go on to pioneer chemical farming at his Rothampstead estate in Hertfordshire.
In 1889 the electrical engineer SEBASTIAN DE FERRANTI (1864–1930) designed what was then THE WORLD’S LARGEST POWER STATION and THE FIRST TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY AT HIGH TENSION, and built it at Deptford.
In 1911 RACHEL MCMILLAN and her sister opened THE FIRST NURSERY SCHOOL IN BRITAIN, at Evelyn House in Deptford.
In 1957 THE FIRST SON ET LUMIÈRE PERFORMANCE SEEN IN BRITAIN was held at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich.
In 1922 THE FIRST SERMON EVER BROADCAST was transmitted from Burdette Aerial Works in Blackheath. It was given by Dr James Boon, lay pastor of Christ Church, Peckham.
BRITAIN’S FIRST PERMANENT BUILDING SOCIETY, THE WOOLWICH, was formed in the upstairs room of a Woolwich pub around 1844, and first registered in 1847. The frontage of the ROYAL ARTILLERY BARRACKS on the north side of WOOLWICH COMMON is 1,200 ft (366m) long and THE LONGEST GEORGIAN FAÇADE IN THE WORLD.
I Never Knew That About London Page 27