Hello and welcome to this episode of Walking London
Today we are going to be exploring Greenwich.
For today's walk we're going to be starting here at Greenwich
railway station, if you come from the DLR it's only just around the corner
and we're going to end up at the Royal Observatory. Now the fancy footwork
you'll be doing on this particular walk will only take you about an hour
however there's going to be lots of stuff for you to do along the way so it
could take you 2 to 3 hours if you incorporate a few of them or you could
actually literally spend the entire day here, it's completely up to you, let's get started
Greenwich railway station has the
distinction of being one of the world's oldest railway stations and also was the
very first commuter railway between here and London Bridge. So let me tell you a
little bit about Greenwich itself. Greenwich comes from the Saxon word
Grenevic which means 'green town' and it's definitely an awful lot greener
around here than some places in London. It was first properly settled by Saxons
in the 6th century as a small fishing village. Since then it's seen an awful
lot of visitors including a Viking invasion and the fleeing Huguenot
refugees from France. In the 15th century this place began to have royal ties but
we'll get onto that in a minute so first let's head down Greenwich High Road
As you're walking from the railway into town you're probably going to wonder
what this building here is. It was the former Town Hall and is now called
Meridian house and is home to an office so unfortunately we can't go up to the
really cool tower at the top. Now you don't have to include this next little
bit on the walking tour you can just keep going straight past it but I want
to include it in here just because it's a really nice story
So let's head to Burney Street
So off the beaten track we've got this memorial here to
Dougie Mullins who died in 1991. Dougie was not the least bit famous he was
actually just a very well loved and well known character here around Greenwich
Dougie was born on this very site where a dairy was and became a master dairyman
just like his father he was often seen pushing around an old-fashioned red and
white hand cart carrying milk and then when he died
they put up this memorial
So this is now a Greenwich High Road but it used to be called London Street and
on it was a theatre where now probably the Picturehouse is, by the way this is a
very very nice cinema if you ever want to go. Whether or not the theatre was
actually on this particular what it's hard to say but we do know it was along
this road and it was a nice theatre enjoyed by the people of Greenwich until
it was destroyed by fire in 1831. What's interesting though is what replaced it
Instead of building a brand new regular theatre they made one made of iron which
was put together with screws so that it could be taken apart and transported to
all the different places in London
You'll have to excuse the crazy hair here because it's very very windy but
this is St Alphege Church, this particular church was built on this site
in 1714 but it's on the site of a succession of other churches that have
been here all dedicated to Alphege who was the Archbishop of Canterbury
Alphege was Archbishop of Canterbury from 954 AD to 1012 AD
The reason why he's so famous is because at that time the Danes came to
London and when the Vikings come it's never good news
During this expedition they also brought down London Bridge
and I've made a video about that including
other information that you could find out about the bridge so do check out the
card that's up here all there's a link in the description. A portion of the
Viking army actually ended up in Canterbury and they were fighting
against the people of Canterbury for 20 days and Alphege was managing to fend
them off until one of his monks betrayed him. He was then locked up into chains
and brought on a boat all the way over here to Greenwich where the Viking camp
was. He was imprisoned here for several months while the Vikings demanded a
ransom of his people however he knew that his people couldn't pay this
because they were poor, in fact he said to them "you press me in vain, I am not
the man to provide Christian flesh for Pagan teeth by rubbing my poor country
mentor enriched their enemies... the gold I give you is the word of God". After seven
months of imprisonment the Vikings grew angrier and angrier and eventually
decided that they were just going to kill him. After a night of feasting and
heavy drinking they took their axes and started to bludgeon him to death with
the blunt ends as well as with meat bones from
feast. Luckily, well, luckily depending on how you look at things, Alphege had
converted a few of the Danish men and so one of them was kind enough to put an
end to it quickly by striking him sharply with the edge. Now let's head
across the road and down Turnpin Lane, one of Greenwich's oldest and
narrowest streets to the market.
If by now you could use a little bit of cake
I definitely recommend the Red Door Cafe it's really nice inside
There's a sign at the entrance to
Greenwich Market that reads "a false balance is abomination to
the Lord but a just wait is his delight", so be careful if you're going to come
here and sell your wares. This is Greenwich Market and there's been a market in
Greenwich since the 14th century though this particular market has been on this
site since about 1700s. This is a great place to come if you're looking for some
souvenirs, nic-nacs, presents all that kind of stuff and also some food, they've
got a really good food market here, but maybe come out on a sunnier, warmer day
It's kind of cold right now
Welcome to the Cutty Sark! This is the last remaining tea clipper in existence
and it was launched at Dumbarton in 1869. Cutty Sark actually refers to a short
skirt worn by young Scottish women. If you also know the Robert Burns poem Tam
O'Shanter then Nannie, the witch, was wearing a cutty
sark and she's actually represented on the very front of the boat
She was an exceedingly fast ship, in fact when she was repurposed from a tea
clipper to do the wool run she managed to do Sydney to London in just 73 days
She was also a hopeful contender to be the first in the annual race to bring
back the first of the new season's tea from China, unfortunately she never came first
The Cutty Sark has been repurposed several times until eventually she came
to rest in Kent so that she would get a little bit of an upgrade back to her
former glory in 1922. In 1954 she was eventually brought to Greenwich and this
is now her resting place. It hasn't been the end of her story though, in 2007
there was a fire in fact an arson attack on the Cutty Sark and my parents were
actually here and was on the Cutty Sark an hour before it was on fire and they
remember hearing all the sirens and seeing the fire engines racing toward her
Luckily most of the timbers were actually in temporary storage and 90% of
the hull that you see here today is the original. If you're wondering what this
building is behind me it's the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. It was
opened in 1902 so that dockworkers living here in the South could reach the
docks in the North. It's 50 feet deep and although a tunnelling shield was used to
go all the way through the excavation work was done by hand
day and night. If you want to use it or go down into it there's a spiral
staircase and there is a lift should you need the lift or if like me you just
don't like spiral staircases
It's said that the view of Greenwich from across the Thames was Sir
Christopher Wren's favourite, and if you've seen my Bank to Tower Hill video
you'll know that I absolutely love the architect Sir Christopher Wren. A little
tidbit, in 1683 a journalist reported that a mermaid was found swimming up
here combing her beautiful locks before swimming away, somehow that seems quite unlikely
This is Grand Square home to Greenwich Palace it has a long royal
history dating back to 1427 when the Duke of Gloucester inherited the land he
was King Henry V's brother. There is quite a lot of this stuff that's already
online, it's already in guidebooks, so I don't want to go over the entire history
so I thought I'd just pick out a few little things that you might be
interested in, for example King Henry VIII
and his two daughters Mary and Elizabeth were born here, also in 1515 the
first ever masquerade in Britain was held here. This is also where in 1536 a
tournament was held where Anne Boleyn dropped a handkerchief and Henry
took it as a sign that she was signaling a secret lover
This ultimately sent Anne to the tower and her death. When Henry's daughter
Queen Mary was on the throne she was staying here at Greenwich and it was
recorded that a captain on a vessel sailed down the Thames and noticed the
banner of England floating in the breeze. As was customary he fired a salute in
honour of royalty, however instead of a blank, the gun was actually loaded and he
shot the ball straight into the wall of the Queen's apartments. Luckily nobody was hurt
This isn't the original Greenwich Palace however, the Palace very
temporarily left the hands of the royals for a short time and decayed until it
was basically beyond repair until Charles II took it on again in
1660, at which time he demolished the original and built a new one which has
been expanded on ever since. One of the building requirements came from Queen
Mary, of William and Mary, who turned Greenwich Palace into a hospital for
injured sailors. She stipulated that the view from Queen's House over there
towards the Thames should never be obstructed
And to this day it isn't
While you're visiting you can go into any of these
buildings, most of them are free, but this one is the King William Court and its
home to the Painted Hall, which you would need to pay for for a tour. The Painted
Hall is special because it's one of the finest dining halls in all of Europe, it
was painted by Sir James Thornhill and finished after 20 years in 1727. He
actually painted the walls and the ceiling and to paint the ceiling he had
to lie on his back on a scaffold. A story has it that while he was painting
the ceiling he decided to get up to admire his handiwork and he was stepping
back when he noticed a person defacing a portion of his work and leapt forward to
stop him, which is a good thing he did and he should probably thank him because
as he was stepping back he became this close to the edge of the scaffolding and
could have fallen to his death. The other person probably saved his life
If you'd like to learn more about Britain's maritime history then I would recommend
checking out the National Maritime Museum, it's a great testament to Britain
strength on the seas and in 1807 is actually first opened as a school for
the children of British sailors
This is Queen's House commissioned by Anne of
Denmark and built between 1616 and 1619. It was an apparently a present from her
husband King James I and they famously did not get on. In fact this was
an apology gift to her because he had sworn at her in public, though to be fair
she had just shot accidently one of his favorite hunting dogs. One of the most
famous things about Queen's House is the Tulip Staircase which you might have
seen quite a lot on Instagram if you're on there. The staircase is famous for two
reasons, the first being just how beautiful it is and secondly for its
ghostly apparitions. In 1966 a Mr Hardy, a Canadian tourist, took a photo of the
Tulip Staircase, went home to develop the film and found that there was a
ghost sliding up the stairs
We're heading up to the Royal Observatory but before we do I just
wanted to show you this. This is the Millennium Sundial and it was put here
funnily enough to mark the passing of the millennium. It's a horizontal dial
which means that it shows both the time and the direction of the sun, however
during its construction errors were made that means it's not entirely accurate
The position of the hours are not correct and it also is always 10 minutes
out, which is rather ironic considering that the Royal Observatory has kept time
accurately to within one second for hundreds of years
This is a hill, sorry about that, but hills are usually worth including for
the view. This used to be called Castle Hill and on top of it was Greenwich
Castle. This was a hill that was used by the military for target practice
but when it wasn't being shot at you could usually find pensioners
fortune-tellers and gypsies up at the top
Greenwich Castle was used for a variety of different reasons, it was used as a
home for the royals, as a prison, a place of defence, and also to house a favorite
mistress. It was actually Christopher Wren who suggested Castle Hill for the
new site of the Royal Observatory which had been at the Tower of London
so in 1675 Britain's first ever Royal Observatory was built up here by
Christopher Wren. Greenwich became globally associated with time when in
1833 a time ball, the first visual time signal in the world, was placed on top of
the observatory ever since then it has risen at 12:55 and dropped at 1:00 p.m.
so that ships on the river could set their clocks accurately
This is the Shepherd Gate Clock or the Magnetic Clock and it was put here in
1852 and is an early example of an electric clock. It was controlled by
electric pulses that came from a master clock on the inside and was probably one
of the first to show Greenwich Mean Time to the public, but if you look a little
closely you might see something unusual, it has a 24-hour analogue dial and it used
to run on astronomical time which meant that it would start running from 12:00
noon however in the 20th century it changed to the GMT regular one starting
at midnight. The dial is unfortunately just an exact replica of the original
because the original was damaged in World War II because a bomb landed here
however the mechanism on the inside is the original. I'm standing in the grounds
of the Royal Observatory and this is the Prime Meridian line or at least an
indication of where the line is. The Prime Meridian is 0 degrees longitude so
my feet are currently in the East and the West but why is this here because
the Prime Meridian line, 0 degrees longitude, it's a man-made construct
unlike the equator. Well there are two main reasons the first being that the
Royal Observatory did so much over the years in terms of calculating new
methods for navigation and timekeeping, the second being that London at the time
of the decision was one of the major ports in the world so most of the
world's ships actually passed through the port of London. At night you might
actually see a laser shining out from the observatory all the way over to
London and the line shows you where the Prime Meridian line actually is but it
just shines out into the void. So who's this guy I hear you ask, well this is
General James Wolfe and he fought in the battle for Canada against the French in
the 1700s. Unfortunately he died in battle specifically in Quebec in 1759
however because he was from here in Greenwich they brought his body back and
he was buried here. This statue was actually given to Greenwich by the
Canadian people in 1930 but he hasn't exactly gone
unscathed in the Second World War a V1 bomb struck
here and almost took James out, luckily he survived
Unfortunately the clock obviously didn't do as well. You can still actually see a
little bit of damage to the base of this structure around here
If you could use a little bit of a sit down at this point and I wouldn't blame you, this is the
Planetarium. You can sit in some really nice cosy armchairs leaning back as you
look up at the projected screen. Usually it's the night sky but they do different
shows different times of the year and it's about a 20 minute presentation
I would book ahead however for this one because even if the others aren't as
busy this always is especially at the weekend so booking ahead is probably key
And now we've come to the end of the walking tour and I really hope that you
enjoyed it. But I could use your help, for my next video would you like to see a
history video of Westminster Bridge or a walking tour of Fulham? Let me know by
voting in the card in the top right hand corner or in the comments section below
Thank you so much to my friend Aaron who's been filming this entire thing he
has a channel himself so I've put the links to that in the description for you
to see, and I guess I'll see you in my next video, bye bye!