Borough in London, England
Greenwich
A brass strip in a Greenwich courtyard marks the historic Prime Meridian, and a red ball still drops down a pole there at 1pm to mark the hour.
Key information
- County
- Greater London
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 289,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- The Prime Meridian, Greenwich Mean Time, the Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory, The O2
- Famous people
- Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Mary I, John Flamsteed
- Football clubs
- Charlton Athletic (the Addicks); Arsenal were founded in Woolwich in 1886
About Greenwich
The line that shaped the world's maps and clocks
Stand in the courtyard of the Royal Observatory and you can put one foot in each hemisphere. A brass strip in the ground marks the historic Greenwich meridian, zero degrees longitude, which the world adopted as its reference for east and west in 1884. Charles II founded the Observatory in 1675, and John Flamsteed became the first Astronomer Royal. The aim was practical. Sailors needed a reliable way to work out longitude at sea, and that meant very accurate star charts and, later, very accurate clocks. Greenwich Mean Time was already in everyday use by then. Britain's railways adopted it during the 1840s, and it became the legal standard time in Great Britain in 1880. In 1884 delegates at an international conference in Washington chose the Greenwich meridian as the international longitude reference, and time zones came to be counted as hours ahead of or behind GMT. Today's global timekeeping runs on UTC, based on atomic clocks. GPS uses its own reference meridian, about 102 metres east of the brass strip. High on Flamsteed House sits the Time Ball, installed in 1833. It rises partway up its mast and drops at exactly 1pm each day. Ships on the Thames could set their chronometers by it, and it was one of the first public time signals of its kind in the world.
A palace where Tudors were born
Long before the astronomers arrived, Greenwich was a royal address. Henry VIII was born at the Palace of Placentia here in 1491, and his daughters Mary I and Elizabeth I were born here too. Henry's court jousted, feasted and plotted along this stretch of the river. The palace is gone, but its legacy survives. Inigo Jones designed the Queen's House in the early 17th century, and it is often described as England's first truly classical building. Its clean white lines were startlingly foreign to a country used to Tudor timber and brick. Greenwich Park, behind it, is one of London's oldest enclosed royal parks. Its Wilderness is now managed as a wildlife sanctuary, and the hill gives one of the best views of the Thames and the City skyline.
Wren's hospital for sailors, and a painted ceiling
The great riverside buildings that greet visitors arriving by boat began life as the Royal Hospital for Seamen. Christopher Wren designed them, and Nicholas Hawksmoor worked on them. The Royal Navy later used the site as its college, and today it is the Old Royal Naval College. The pair of domes face each other across a gap kept open so that the Queen's House behind would not lose its river view. Inside is the Painted Hall, decorated by James Thornhill between 1707 and 1726. It is sometimes called the Sistine Chapel of the UK. Walls and ceiling swarm with gods, kings and allegorical figures, and the whole room is a celebration of British sea power. The area's maritime pull earned it a UNESCO World Heritage listing in 1997 as Maritime Greenwich.
Why a Scottish ship lives in south-east London
The Cutty Sark was built in Dumbarton in 1869 as a tea clipper, designed to race home from China with the new season's crop. The name comes from Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter, in which a witch wears a short shirt, a cutty sark. Steam soon beat sail on the tea run, and the ship carried wool from Australia instead. She now rests in a dry dock at Greenwich, and since a major restoration reopened in 2012 visitors can walk underneath her hull. In 2007, during that restoration, a fire swept through the ship, though much of her timber had already been removed for safekeeping. Nearby, the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, which opened in 1902, takes pedestrians beneath the Thames to the Isle of Dogs.
Markets, pie and a big white tent
Greenwich Market is one of the area's best-known places to browse. Stalls selling crafts, antiques and street food fill the covered streets around it, and the nearby pubs and pie and mash shops carry on south London traditions. On the Greenwich Peninsula stands The O2, opened as the Millennium Dome for the 2000 celebrations. It had a rocky start as an attraction but found its feet as one of the world's busiest concert arenas. A cable car across the Thames from the peninsula opened in 2012, the year Greenwich also became a Royal Borough. Greenwich Park hosted the Olympic equestrian events that summer.
Cannons, Addicks and the birthplace of Arsenal
Football in this part of London has a distinctive twist. Arsenal began in 1886 as Dial Square, founded by workers at the Royal Arsenal armaments factory in Woolwich. That is why the club has a cannon on its crest, and why its fans are called Gunners. The club moved north to Highbury in 1913. Charlton Athletic remain at The Valley, their home since 1919. Their nickname, the Addicks, is traced to haddock suppers. Woolwich also gave the Thames its great flood defence, the Thames Barrier, whose silver shells sit in the river. The free Woolwich Ferry has carried vehicles and pedestrians across the river for generations.
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