Somebody told me the other day that Nicholas Hawksmoor, being a lover of all things grim, liked to put memento mori into his designs just for the sheer hell of (or hell-avoidence) of it. They cited this window, on the first floor of the Queen Anne Building in the Old Royal Naval College, in the shape of a coffin (rather beautifully mirrored across the courtyard through said window).

I don’t know if I believe them, but it’s a great story, plausible with what tradition (and Peter Ackroyd) hand down to us about Hawksmoor, and the windows, suitable for a pensioner of considerable girth, are fantastic, whatever the tale.

Of course the building being part of the uni these days, it doesn’t escape one or two of the privations of academic institutions, not least the unfortunate positioning of the fizzy pop dispenser in front of such a grand orifice.

I have this grand, pristine image of the Painted Hall in my mind but when I actually went in there a couple of weeks ago after a long-ish gap, I realised just how shabby it’s looking just now. Years of candle and gas lights, smoke, light, fumes and all manner of other nasties  have taken their toll, with dark patches of tarnished varnish, peeling paint and even what looks suspiciously like the remains of a thrown egg on one wall (the end, near the Nelson Room; it catches rather alarmingly in the artificial light, though it could, of course, be a glass of juice or wine or something similarly sticky.

Last year the Greenwich Foundation finally got news that it was to receive lottery cash to help develop an application to spruce up the Painted Hall (which seems like a very long-winded piece of bureaucracy if you ask me but then I’ve never understood the mysteries of public funding…) but it still needs vast amounts of money.

There are various schemes to raise funds, from the grand to the tiny. You can make a large donation and your name will be added to the illustrious names already taking pride of place in the hall:

(though I suspect you’d probably need to give a bit more than £19,500 to get the King’s name painted out and your name inserted) you can purchase a little badge  for a quid (choose your favourite from Sir James Thornhill, Queen Caroline, Prince Frederick, Sir James Thornhill, a random cherub or Time – collect ‘em all!)

Or you can buy a copy of An Explanation of the Painting In the Royal Hospital At Greenwich, also for a pound.

Now, I’ve long wished for a facsimile edition of An Explanation… as I’ve never seen one, except under glass, at the Discovery Centre. It was written by Sir James Thornhill himself, knowing that the hall was destined to be a visitor attraction from the start. The Greenwich Pensioners guiding tourists round the place sold it for sixpence and, perhaps future-proofing it, perhaps just showing off, Thornhill wrote it as bilingual – it was in French as well as English.

I confess to be mildly disappointed that the Greenwich Foundation didn’t go the whole hog and do an exact copy of Thornhill’s guide – making it the same size as the original and including the full text rather than a transcript of the English on a couple of folded A4 sheets. Presumably they did their sums and worked out that there would be more people  prepared to pay a pound for an approximation on nice, parchment-esque paper than Phantoms prepared to pay rather more than that for the full monty.

Of course I paid my pound – I’ve been wanting to know what Greenwich’s earliest tourist guide says for ages, and to be fair, the actual words are  the most important thing.

And it’s charming. It’s more a description than an explanation – telling us what the symbols and figures are, rather than any kind of artist statement, which is rather refreshing. And what a fabulously ornate description. I love the idea of the river ‘Humber with his Piggs of Lead,’ ’great Feftoons of Sea Shells’, ‘vaft pots of flowers’, St George, the tutelar Saint of England’ ‘treading on a Flain Dragon’,  ’the celebrated Englifh Aftronomer the Reverend Mr Flamfteed,’ and ‘his ingenious Difciple Mr Thomas Wefton’ ‘holding the Conftruction of ‘the great Eclipfe which happened April the 22nd, 1715, and, of course, the ‘Crouds of People rejoicing at his Majefty’s happy Arrival.’

Yes. This is definitely worth a pound. Hell – give them two; they’re going to need it. But I still can’t help rather hoping that at some point they’ll do an exact copy of the whole thing.

Many of the places you might expect to have elaborate classical sculptures in the Old Royal Naval College tend to be rather forlorn – though when you do get a carved pediment, it’s usually a real humdinger.

Apart from the obvious, the other three buildings of the ORNC are plain but King Charles Building actually has several carved pediments. Thing is, I can find virtually nothing about them. Even the usually-highly-detailed John Bold doesn’t seem to mention the building of the King’s House very much at all, and I certainly haven’t found any explanation of these figures. Here’s the pediment on the east front of the building:

Okay. So the coat of arms doesn’t take much working out. It’s Charles II’s badge, including the garter, but with a couple of cornucopias instead of the Lion and the Unicorn.

I’m even cool with the guy on the right. I’m assuming, given the whole beardy-bloke-with-sea-monster deal, it’s Neptune – all very maritime.

But who’s the woman? And what the hell is she holding? A spike? Some kind of navigational instrument? An obelisk? Something Masonic?

Answers on a virtual postcard, please…

I’ve had a lot of questions about the pier recently. Mainly of the ‘what’s going on, then,’ variety. This is hardly surprising since no one, including me, seems to know. Stuff is going on; we’re not in the loop. But at least stuff is going on.

Every time I walk past something’s happened – which is a good thing – I am so sick of it being a building site.

The Cutty Sark has a bit more gold frou-frou, a few more panes go on the lean-to greenh0use (at least if they don’t get all the corporate functions they’re after they can grow tomatoes) and the nasty lift shaft gets a little more intrusive. Why the hell did they put it on the same side as the Old Royal Naval College?

Original plans had it disguised as a pile of tea chests waiting on the quayside to be loaded though I understand it’s now going to be glass. It’s hard to know how it will look when it’s finished. Stephen’s shots here make it look quite hard to minimise, but perhaps if they paint the girders a paler shade of grey it will blend into the general grey of the riverscape. Let’s hope.

The pier buildings are also coming on, though it all seems to have slowed down since an initial spurt earlier in the autumn. I guess it’s all going on inside now, so we don’t see it happening.  Next to them, though, we now know what the entrance will look like – a document Richard found shows – well, pretty much what we might have expected – uninspired and football turnstileish, but no better and no worse than other modern TFL constructions. Gone are the days where functional things are designed to be beautiful too, but it is, at least, going to be easy to find, which is not something Greenwich Pier has been for many years.

All in all, I find it all a bit unexciting, but at least things are happening and it should be done soon. They’re promising the Cutty Sark for Easter – so I would imagine that the other projects will be under pressure to finish then too.

The one thing that does puzzle me is the felling of two perfectly healthy plane trees by the Lewin Gate. Presumably it’s assumed patrons of the eaterie in the pier don’t want to look at leaves or maybe it’s to make the entrance clearer. It’s not the end of the world IMHO. Being a Phantom who loves green, I mourn any tree that has to go, it leaves a gap in a handsome perimeter row of planes and feels a bit unnecessary – but  in the scheme of things going on that I’m not wild about, this doesn’t even score.

I just want it all over, please.

Remember this?

Back in 2009 we were enjoying the many pumps of the Old Royal Naval College that have survived time, tide and enemy action to live dotted aroun various courtyards, hiding in plain sight.

Here it is, in Queen Anne’s Court:

and in case you can’t quite place it, here it is in longshot:

Stephen is quite a fan and has been keeping an eye on them ever since, though for my money the very best bit about these pumps was the sign at the top of this post – a faded, painted note that says ‘Not to be taken away.’

Folks, I have some sad news for you. The sign whose only raison d’etre is to tell us not to take it away has been taken away:

I don’t know why it’s gone; I have written to the ORNC to see if I can find out. Nor do I know why the disappearance of something as tiny as this has saddened me quite so disproportionately this morning.  I hope it will be returned intact very soon.

Until then two small holes and a grey stain are all that remains of a delightful little piece of Greenwich whimsy.

Lovely pictures are beginning to come the Phantom’s way, courtesy of the Wheel, and here are a few of the first. This one’s by LGM:

I find it almost impossible to imagine that I actually live just down the road from somewhere that looks like that – it’s like some stately home or Versailles or something – I feel that I should be listening to a Purcell voluntary whilst looking at it. And the angle it’s taken from makes it look as though the whole thing’s set in the countryside…

Methers’s pics have taken a slightly different approach. Vanbrugh Castle, a mere dot in the distance, seems at least a little closer here:

And I really love the framing of the Dome by the ironwork of the Wheel.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of the ORNC, I think of angles. I think of mathematical precision, straight lines and rigorous perspective. But what’s that building just behind the curvy colonnade in the bottom left corner doing? For starters, I’m not quite sure what it is – it’s round the back (I have an inkling, but I need to do some more digging…) but just look at that angle. It doesn’t particularly bother me – but it does make me curious. I mean – who decided to put something at such a squiff in a place that is so very rigid in its design? I like to think that it was an individual decision.

I don’t know what it is or who built it – but I’m going to find out. I want to know who it was that had a little rebellion one day and built what is effectively a neo-classical shed on the wonk; a little fist of defiance to architectural conformity.

In the few hours I’ve been out and about no fewer than three people, Owen, DeeBee and Anon have all asked the same thing. What is that strange marquee thing going up in between the two main buildings of the Old Royal Naval College?

I’ve been wondering myself – I had thought that it was perhaps something to do with the new Obsevation Wheel – though it seems a bit early and in the wrong place for that.

Owen wondered if it had something to do with the beer festival, and Anon thought it might be yet another film shoot.

My current best-guess is a temporary visitor centre while they dicker with the new “Discovery Greenwich” building, though why on earth they would think that was a good venue for it is beyond me.

Fear not, though, folks, I have emailed the ORNC – perhaps they’ll let us know what’s going on…