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!
