England, Day 3

Ooooh, Day 3 was one of my favorite days in England, as it turns out, because Day 3 was Greenwich Day! As I may have mentioned, I have developed something of an intellectual crush on the minds of the Scientific Revolution, and this trip very much indulged my feelings of hero- and history-worship. (Is it inevitable that all Americans in England end up walking around feeling surreally surrounded by actual history? At some level, I did recognize my own dorkiness, but at the same time, it was, well, exciting, and it made me happy, darn it.)

Our trip to Greenwich started by meeting up with, of course, the London Walks guide at the Tube station at the Tower of London. We bypassed the Tower that day, though, to get to the dock where we boarded a boat to sail (chug?) down the Thames to Greenwich. We didn’t get an explanation of all the buildings we were passing from the boat guys, much to the irritation of our guide, because about half of the other passengers were middle school students who didn’t seem like they’d be very attentive, and presumably the captain decided not to waste his time. So I don’t really know if we saw anything very interesting, except I do know we passed the financial district, also known as the “Manhattan of London,” complete with many impressively tall modern buildings, and, according to Mickey, many very swank apartments where many wealthy expats live, amongst other people.

Anyway, when we got off the boat in Greenwich, the first sight we were treated to, or rather, were not treated to, was that of the Cutty Sark, renowned as the world’s last real tea clipper ship, which, as you may note from the small notice at the bottom of the page:

There is currently no access to the Cutty Sark for visitors. She is currently undergoing major conservation work and is no longer visible to the public.

And she is, indeed, completely surrounded by a big metal fence, and quite invisible to people standing on the ground in front of her. Alas. The guide encouraged us to come back when the conservation work was finished. Darn, guess I’ll have to take another trip…

From there, we went to what is now the property of at least two universities, but was before that, and is still known as, the Old Royal Naval College. The site of the buildings was the original site of Greenwich Palace, reputedly Henry VIII’s favorite palace and the birthplace of Elizabeth I. According to our guide, though, because the original Tudor-era palace was brick, it eventually fell into ruin, and was eventually replaced with the buildings we now see.

In the meantime, though, James I, Elizabeth’s successor, had the Queen’s House built for his wife, Queen Anne. This was not really a courtly gesture of solicitude, though, because he banished her there for the rest of their marriage, reportedly, as our guide told us, “because James and Anne liked to compete over the same men.” It is rumored he kept her on a rather meager allowance as well, which possibly accounts for why she had the main roadway of the day running directly through the ground floor of the house; perhaps it was a toll road? In any case, the Queen’s House is architecturally interesting for being the first Palladian building in the country, years ahead of fashion. (The colonnaded walkway in the picture was actually the road, originally. The second picture shows it, and the entire Royal Naval College complex, from behind.)

 

Following James I, Charles II wanted to build a new King’s House where the old Tudor palace had been, but could only complete one wing. (In the four-building complex, it is the front right-hand building.) When William and Mary rose to the throne, they, or rather, Mary, recognized the need to care for all the many wounded sailors who were returning from the most recent naval war with France. She advocated a plan to complete the King’s House as a naval hospital, and William followed through on the request after her death.

Of course, before she died, she decreed that the view of the river from the Queen’s House not be spoiled, so Christopher Wren’s original designs were reworked to leave the view open, which is how the quad-split design of the complex came into being. He added a second front wing in the same style as the original King’s House, and then added two, grander wings behind them, with an open court in the middle for the Queen’s House’s view.

And then, it was time to go up to the Observatory! As it turns out, I was so excited about my trip to the Observatory, I already wrote about it: Standing on the center of the world. Visiting the Observatory was pretty much my entire reason for wanting to go to Greenwich in the first place, despite the amount of other stuff I appear to have learned, and written about above. Here’s the view of the Observatory from behind the Queen’s House:

The Observatory actually plays a largish role in Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle trilogy, so this place got the dual thrill of feeling like stepping into both history and fiction! For my rhapsodizing about all the fantastic stuff they have there, go read my other post. It was really interesting.

What else? Oh, yes, we went into Greenwich proper to get some lunch, at which point we passed “The First Shop in the World, (Longitude 00° 00.4′W).” Our guide was disgruntled with their claim, pointing out that the real “first shop in the world” is more properly the gift shop on the actual Observatory grounds, but it makes for an eye-catching sign anyway:

And finally, we also stopped by the Painted Hall and the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul, which are inside the Royal Naval College buildings. The Chapel is supposedly known for being in many modern film wedding scenes, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral. No one was filming anything while we were there, and it was quite beautiful inside. The Painted Hall, however, was more impressive. Painted by James Thornhill, it took nineteen years to complete, and is claimed to be the most beautiful ceiling in Europe after the Sistine Chapel itself. Amusingly, the short history their own website provides points out:

This was planned to be the hospital’s dining hall. Wren submitted the designs in 1698, and the roof and the dome above were already in place five years later. Thornhill’s decoration, by contrast, took nineteen years to complete… Pensioners could not eat in the Hall while he was working and it was both too grand and too much of a tourist attraction when finished.

My favorite part is the bit in the middle of ceiling featuring the Spirit of Architecture, which you can more or less see in the picture below. The big piece of paper is a detailed architectural drawing.

Interestingly, there is now also a memorial stone in the floor of the Hall, near the doorway, which the docents pointed out to us, as it is dedicated to American men who joined the Royal Navy to fight in WWII before the US had officially entered the war. The memorial was still decorated with paper poppies from Armistice Day, and it was accompanied by a book of biographies about the men, many of whom had lived extremely impressive lives.

*Update*: I almost forgot! How did we leave Greenwich? We walked under the Thames, of course. There’s a set of huge elevator shafts in domed huts on either side of the Thames, one right next to the Cutty Sark, and the other in a park on the other side of the river, (which is where I took the front view of the Royal Naval College complex from.) They each contain a truly enormous elevator, with wood paneling, bench seating, an elevator operator, and a television screen showing if there are any people coming out of the tunnel towards the elevator on that side. The elevators are large enough to bring in bikes, which is fortunate, because a great many people use this path under the Thames as a normal part of their getting around, and about half of them seemed to be on bikes. Even in the tunnel, when they weren’t supposed to be. Tsk, tsk.

(Sorry I’ve been so delayed in getting on with this. I have been blogging over at Geek Buffet, though! I’ll try to pay more attention to this blog, too.)