Voltaire, The Saucy Wenches of Greenwich Park and the Unfortunate Admiral Byng

The more I dig around into the past, the more I realise that nothing stands alone - everything bounces off everything else. Things are going on at the same time as other, seemingly unrelated, things, fun mingles with tragedy, national events mingle with personal moments; celebrities mingle with those whose names are lost forever.

So, in trying to investigate what made the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire come to Greenwich in May 1726, I found myself trudging old ground with new boots.

Voltaire, in exile from France while his candid writing continued to smart among certain influential parties, managed to arrive at what must have been a truly surreal moment. He stepped off the boat on a cloudless Greenwich day, a gentle west wind playing at his periwig, and immediately found himself surrounded by hundreds of fabulously-dressed, sparkling, beautiful people. The young maidens, in particular, entranced him with their elegant cotton gowns, running pell-mell across the grass, and dazzling young men on horseback. All along the the Thames merchant vessels were bedecked with bunting, and a gilded barge twinkled with the sound of musicians and laughter. Everyone made him welcome, finding him a good place to view the races and getting him to join in.

"I fancied that I was transported to the Olympian games, but the beauty of the Thames, the crowds of vessels, and the vast size of the city of London soon made me blush for having dared to liken Elis to England."

What is this Arcadian Elysium he's describing with such rapture? Greenwich Fair, of course. Sadly he was relieved of his moment of bliss later when he met some ladies of the court, “who were stiff and cold and took tea and made a great noise with their fans”who put him right - telling him that the nymphs he had enjoyed so much earlier were mere serving girls in their Sunday best and the youths just apprentices on hired horses. The real hoi-poloy wouldn't be seen dead at such a bun-fight.

It's likely that Voltaire's account of his first day in England is about as true as Candide - but that doesn't necessarily make it un-real. The poor sod wouldn't have been able to speak a word of English, and he didn't have any money either (he later admitted "I was without a penny, sick to death of a violent ’flu, a stranger, alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to nobody.") He was writing to a pal back home - for his friend's amusement - but what he was doing here was what he always did - tell a funny story to illustrate a finer point. His point being the coldness of the people of the court - whether or not he actually experienced much warmth at the fair itself doesn't really matter.

It's his contempt of the courts and the people who ran it that is at the heart of this passionate man, and it's his other connection with Greenwich that touches me more. England had been at loggerheads with France for donkeys years - and much of the time that amounted to all-out war. Remember Admiral Byng? The unfortunate seaman who thought he'd try to repair his ship before facing the French again and got executed for his pains? Well Voltaire was really very affected by Byng's case. So affected, in fact, that he thought he'd try to help out.

He wrote several impassioned letters to various people, including passing on the good opinions of his great friend, the Duc du Richelieu to relevant English authorities.

In retrospect, this may not have been the best possible thing to do. It doesn't seem to have occurred to Voltaire that both himself and the good duke were, by pure accident of birth, ahem, French. Byng's stars already occupied the wrong place in the heavens, and though it's unlikely that Voltaire's well-meant intervention actually did for him - he was a gonner anyway, I doubt it helped much.

In February 1757, Voltaire wrote to Richelieu of Byng "The court martial found him a brave man and a true. But, notwithstanding, by one of those contradictions which are common in all such cases, he was condemned to death on the strength of an ancient law--I know not what."

And poor old Voltaire had to admit that their own efforts probably hadn't helped much:

"The faction which attacked him now accuses him of treachery in trying to turn your letter to account-as if it were that of a man he had bribed to speak for him. So reasons malice: but the clamour of the dogs will not prevent honest people from regarding your letter as that of a just and generous conqueror, prompted only by the magnanimity of his heart."

Despite the Gallic duo's best efforts, Byng was executed a month later, on his own ship, after being held in Greenwich Hospital as a prisoner. The above wasn't quite Voltaire's last word on the matter. He mentions it obliquely again in his 1757 masterpiece Candide, where the Byng-character is also executed.

"Dans ce pays ci, c'est bon, de temps en temps, de tuer un amiral pour encourager les autres."

In this country, it's good from time to time, to kill an admiral to encourage the others..."

Bet he wished he'd never left Greenwich Fair...

Greenwich Fair.

It feels a bit wrong to talk about a May Monday fair on one of the few May Mondays that doesn't have a holiday on it, but that's the way the Christian Moveable Feast crumbles. I almost missed this morning, having forgotten that Pentecost and it's old name Whitsun were one and the same festival, but I noticed just in time to be able to talk about the scandalous Greenwich Fair* that went on for centuries before the authorities closed it down.

This was the day when all of London seemed to flock here. It was a great leveller - toffs would rub shoulders (and heaven knows what else) with their servants, tradesmen with their customers, dockers with muckers, sailors with soldiers, and, of course, the criminal fraternity with practically anyone who didn't have their eye (and one hand) firmly on their valuables.

For the duration of the Fair, anything went. The place teemed with life - and the inhabitants, for the most part, took advantage of it. Houses would open up their front rooms as 'tea shops,' locals would hawk whatever they could to the hoardes of visitors and even the Greenwich Pensioners got in on the act by hiring out their telescopes so that people could 'look at St Paul's Cathedral.' They were, frankly, more interested in ogling the pirates hanging from the gibbets down at Blackwall.

Hawkers, sideshows, wax works, lurid theatrical entertainments - there were booths for anything the partying cockney could want, and as the years went on, the upper classes left them to it more and more.

They could get a tooth pulled or watch a prize fight. They could buy a trinket or dance a quadrille. They could hear a trumpet voluntary or get their fortunes told, watch wild beasts fight or drink a barrel of beer. They could visit Wombwell's Menagerie or any one of the dozens of alehouses on the Thames. They could 'meet' a nice young lady and if they were really getting on, that they could engage in a spot of tumbling together. He could even get himself a Scratcher to tease her with. (no - not some strange marital aid - it was little serrated wheel on a stick which you rolled up and down your victim's back. The noise it made sounded as though you'd ripped their clothes. Hilarious.)

By the Victorian age it was really getting out of hand. Charles Dickens described it as "a sort of spring-rash, a three day fever which cools the blood for six months afterwards." Nathaniel Hawthorne wasn't so charitable. The fair merely reminded him that "the common people of England, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even so necessary thing as a washbowl, not to mention a bathing tub."

The 'nicer' people of Greenwich, largely those who were moving into the smart new houses going up during the early 19th Century, agreed with him and started to campaign to get the fair closed down. At first the hawkers, tradesmen - and punters - took absolutely no notice. After the railways arrived, it got even more crowded - 200,000 people and more. The Greenwich elite got even more panicked and eventually, after a riot of drunken soldiers in 1850, the fair was suppressed in 1857.

So as we sit here on a May Monday morning, considering another week at work, have a care for the cockney lad and his lass enjoying one of the few days off they'd get a year...

* There was a fair at Easter and also in October. AD Webster reckons it was on 12th, 13th and 14th May and 11th, 12th and 13th Oct - but I find it hard to imagine that it would have always been on those exact dates.

Deer Me

Benedict knows I like a good gulley as much as the next Phantom and kindly sent me this interesting conduit for identification. It's in Greenwich Park, just in that little hollow that comes down from One Tree Hill and just up from the Queen's Oak. I've never been too sure of it myself, but The Friends of Greenwich Park's website came to my rescue.

It's a deer trough, installed in 1858, pretty much where the keeper's cottage stood. He's a very old pic of the place:

A.D. Webster (from whom I culled the pic) reckons it probably dated back to The Commonwealth or just before; I find it a very curious to imagine Greenwich Park with such a large series of buildings in it. So did the Victorians - they demolished it in 1853.

Webster tellls me the first mention of deer in the park is January 1510. A Eustace Browne was paid the princely sum of £13 6s 8d to stock the Park with deer for Henry VIII to chase around. They were clearly not fast enough for Bluff King Hal, as five years later he had some "quick" deer transferred from Eltham (I know, I know, it might have just meant 'not dead' but the thought of extra-speedy deer makes me smile...)

Queen Elizabeth enjoyed hunting there, and Sir Walter Scott (admittedly about as renowned for historical accuracy as I am...) talks of King James hunting in the park too. It must have been one of the only things James did there - he didn't really care for Greenwich - it was too cold and damp for his many ailments.

Everyone had their eye on a quick buck - and during the Commonwealth Cromwell had to set up a special task force to prevent poaching. He eventually got bored and decided to flog the whole park and its contents to one John Parker, though of course on the Restoration Parker lost his prize.

A.D. Webster talks of the pollution that threatened the deer during Victorian times - the factories pumping out smoke caused all manner of "deleterious effects of an impure atmosphere" and nearly did for them. In 1896 they numbered just 47, but the herd had increased to 150 by 1902.

Of course at that time they were allowed to roam all over the park, which delighted visitors. Their keepers were less delighted when the visitors killed them with kindness by feeding them some extraordinary snacks. One poor thing died of eating "too much gooseberry tart;" another's stomach was found to contain "two hatfuls of orange peel," in just two of the fatalities caused by picnickers sharing their lunch - which even included, I'm sad to say, venison. Here's an Edwardian chap sharing his mutton pie, scotch egg, battenburg and cheesy wotsits with a new friend:

With the coming of first the motor car, and then larger volumes of visitors, the deer had to be enclosed. At first it was just at night, but later they were relegated to the enclosure in the South-East corner.

The two herds (red and fallow) are very small indeed now. but they're still lovely to see. There are two places (apart from the little observation hut which isn't often open to the public) where you can get a not-bad view of them. The obvious one is not far from Blackheath gate, with a crazy-paved area and seats. The other, you have to seek out. Go into the Victorian flower garden and keep the thickets on your right (or your left if you're entering from the Maze Hill entrance) There is a little pathway through the trees to another spot with a seat where you can see the wilderness where the deer are. There's a little seat there too.

Sadly they're very well kept-in - two (perhaps three now?) layers of wire mesh, which means getting a good picture is nigh-on impossible. Here's the best I could do a couple of years ago in the snow:

Prehistoric Greenwich (1) Cox's Mount

Charlton

Start of a new occasional series today, guys, delving into Greenwich before Greenwich. Paul has been talking to me about the really ancient prehistory of the area which, in his own words, is "pretty lush," and virtually unknown outside archaeological circles.

He's been doing a bit of his own research, too and making some calculations, measurements and digging (not always literally - anyone who watches Time Team - a controversial programme, we're divided in our household - will know there's nothing like a spot of geo-fizz) and has been coming to some interesting conclusions...

Cox's Mount, at the Thames-end of the Maryon/Maryon-Wilson/Gilberts Pits group, was a vast Iron Age hill fort. I vaguely remember reading about it in Beryl Platt's book (though of course, much as I loved that volume, and romantic as I am, I still felt a tad uneasy about some of her conclusions about mythical characters and fairy tale princes - you'll find my entry on it on April 1st...) and it seems that Charlton was a big deal in the Iron Age. It's hardly surprising - if you climb all the steps up to the top of the mount above Gilbert's Gravel pit it's a loooong way up - and that's after the erosion caused by said pit.


Sadly the gravel pits, fascinating as they are in their own right (another day, another day...) are a large part of the reason why there's virtually nothing left of the fort. We can only guess how big it actually was - excavations reveal it's less than an eighth of its original size, though, and it was certainly big enough for the Romans to cast their beady eyes on it then move in themselves.

Paul's had his metaphorical tape measure out, and though he's still working on it, he has, as a by-product, cleared up a couple of questions I had about road names in the area. Rathmore (Road - where the benches are) means "Great Fort" and Troughton (Road, next door) means "Ditch" - but they are about 1000 metres away and Paul points out this is far too big for a single fort, so it was probably another one. I had wondered, since Paul also tells me that there were some excavations done around the turn of the last century, whether the Victorians named the roads for the dig but it seems that they were done in 1915 - too late, I suspect, for the buildings - so maybe the names are older.

During these excavations the remains of a couple of buildings were found, so it must have been an exciting time, but Paul reckons that most of the buildings wouldn't have been on top anyway. Excavations at Danebury, a humungus fort in Hampshire, show that most people, including the chief, would have lived in the lower slopes as farmers, saving the long slog uphill for the times when they were under siege - probably from rival clans - or even Mafia-style protection rackets. We can only specualte as to what an Iron Age Don Corleone might have looked like...

They also found three Roman vases, including one that had been tossed away by the gravel extractors. Paul continues:

"A prehistoric hearth was found on top, indicated by burnt pebbles to the depth of 33 inches deep and 36 wide. So deep it was probably for smelting bronze and iron. It's believed the two of the mounds at the highest part may be barrows. The site demonstrates 400 years of occupation from around 50bc."

By the time the Romans arrived all that climbing had clearly got to most of the farmers of South-east England, and since numbers were increasing, they were turning more to walled towns. The tribal boundaries would have been miles away anyway by now. But no point in wasting a good fort, and the invading Romans were most interested in its possiblities, which would account for the buildings and vases found.

There don't seem to be any of those fab 'artist's impressions' of the fort itself (yeah, yeah, who didn't buy that one of the Roman soldiers on the loo at Hadrian's Wall as a kid? Ah. Just me, then...) but Paul has sent me a fascinating picture of the view from the fort in the very early 20th Century. A truly involving picture in so many ways. As usual, click on any image to make it larger.

The colour photos are of the 'barrows,' which he took when he nipped under the fence to get a closer look. If you do the same, take care - last time I was there a woman walking her dog nearly ended up in the bushes below...

Paul has an archaeological manufacturing business (exactly what it sounds - his little cottage industry makes stone axes - I have a wonderful image in my mind of him outside his wattle and daub hut in Charlton, knapping his flints by the fire, a blackened cauldron bubbling away merrily as he works...) Check him out here and here ...

More prehistoric fun another day, folks...

The Nelson Pediment

King William Court, The Old Royal Naval College

I always find it a bit odd that one of the best bits of The Old Royal Naval College is tucked away in a side-court so you actually have to seek it out rather than it being on display for all to see. It's huge (40ft x 10ft) - but frankly it feels a bit like an afterthought. And, to some extent, I guess it is.

Nelson was (and remains) Britain's most important naval commander, but he died after the ORNC had been finished and all the good spots for splendid pediments were already taken. They had to shoehorn him in somewhere, though, so he's round the back of King William Block - you have to go right into the courtyard and look back on yourself to find it.

It was created in 1812 by Benjamin West from his 1807 painting The Immortality of Nelson, held by the National Maritime Museum. Coade Stone and many coade-connoisseurs reckon it's the finest example of sculptures in the material. West, by the way, is most famous for his painting The Death of Nelson (he specialised in the heroic demises of famous naval leaders it appears; he also depicted General Wolfe's last moments) in the Maritime museum and of course he was responsible for the giant piece above the altar in the Naval College Chapel, but in the actual execution of the pediment, he worked with Joseph Panzetta, who worked for the Coades for 26 years. It took the pair of them three years to create and West got paid a thousand pounds for his design - considerably more per foot than Sir James Thornhill got for the Painted Hall. That's Inflation, I guess. The Coade factory received £2,584, but I doubt Panzetta saw too much of it.


The main figures are of Britannia, complete with trident and helmet, receiving Nelson's body from Neptune. On either side various creatures and godlets, maritime and otherwise, writhe from their Coade-stone bases. It's all very symbolic, though I'm not sure of much other than the obvious Sea-god- Britain-ruling-the-waves-dead-hero stuff. Somewhere I've seen a little key; a line drawing of all the figures with explanations of their meanings, but I can't for the life of me remember where.

Horses, spare cannons and balls, what looks like a sinking ship (though it could be some kind of fortress - it's not the most clearly defined bit) and tablets picking out highlights from Nelsons career all jostle each other for space. I particularly like the three maidens holding Brittania's coat and Union (Jack, presumably, since it's maritime) flagged shield while she's got her hands full.

The best way to view the pediment is from just below the lamp post in King William Court, but the most romantic way to see it is from the window of the little side-annex off the Painted Hall, dedicated to Nelson. It's usually shut unless you go on a guided tour, but don't forget to have a peek out of the window if you take an official walk.

The Perils and Pitfalls of Handkerchiefs

Being the First of May, it seems almost obligatory to go back to a time when May Day was a big deal. There was virtually nothing Henry VIII liked better than going a-Maying. Although it really only seemed to consist of going for a walk with whichever queen was in vogue at the time (and half the court, of course), collecting some of the scented May flowers from the hedgerows and coming back, Henry used it as an excuse for yet another Royal kneesup.

He'd get himself all togged-up with new clothes (tradionally new linen shirts were the thing to have on May Day, though I suspect he'd have gone the whole hog, being king, and got hmself a new doublet, hose and codpiece ensemble while he was about it) gather his nobles together and set out for Shooters Hill or some other bit of countryside near Greenwich Palace. Often there would be little 'surprises' set up for him along the way - he'd be presented with flowers by maidens or met by a bunch of archers dressed in green, for example. Once he was even introduced to 'Robyn Hood.' Oh, how they laughed...

It was a jolly occasion - not being Christian in any way, it owed more to pagan traditions than most holidays - and it's always been associated with fecundity (think Maypoles...) And what better than to combine a favourite holiday with a dose of his favourite sport, which also employed a giant phallic symbol? Henry jousted every day he possibly could, and May Day was a good excuse for a new suit of armour and a tournament in the Greenwich Tiltyards.

Katherine of Aragon was, of course, the king's Queen of the May for many of those happy festivals, but things started to get darker when he ousted her for Anne Boleyn. The newly-installed queen had three heady years of excess before Henry realised he wasn't going to get a male heir out of Anne either.

She and Henry might have pretty much literally danced on Katherine of Aragon's grave at her death in January 1536 (they wore yellow and declared it a day of joy) but she knew she'd be up to her own neck in trouble if the child she was carrying wasn't a boy. It was. Unfortunately for Anne it was also dead. In some horrible irony she miscarried the day of Katherine of Aragon's funeral. Things were getting edgy.

Henry was in a right mood for weeks. He moved-in his latest mistress (Jane Seymour) and started looking for excuses to get rid of Anne. With Katherine dead, it would be most convenient if Anne died too - none of that nasty divorce business. So it was mighty handy when, as Tradition tells us, Anne dropped her hanky in front of Sir Henry Norris in Greenwich Park on May Day 1536. It wasn't the first time she'd been a butter-fingers with that handkerchief - she'd already done it once, several years earlier, in front of Norris at his family gaff in Yattendon in Berskire.

This was clearly a come-on if ever the King had seen one. Anne was obviously having an affair with the Royal Steward. Henry rode off in a huff, leaving the Queen just standing there.

The next day she was arrested for adultery and carted off to the Tower. Just in case there was any doubt, the King's special commission miraculously also discovered no fewer than five other men that the queen had been supposedly dropping her hankies for. One of them was Mark Smeaton, a local musician (about whom more on another day.) This poor sod was dragged up before the King's 'investigators' and after some intense 'interrogation' (read 'torture') 'confessed' to the whole kaboodle, and named several other blokes the queen had been secretly hanky-pankying with, including her own brother. They weren't allowed to be tortured, being gentlemen, so they went straight to the executioner's axe. Smeaton, a mere commoner, was hanged.

On the 19th May, Anne herself was beheaded. Henry didn't stick around to watch - he waited under an old oak in Greenwich Park for the gun-signal which would tell him the deed was done - though of course out of respect, he didn't actually marry Jane Seymour until the following day.

History doesn't tell us whether the embroidered hanky used to bind Anne's eyes at her execution was the same one she dropped in Greenwich Park, but I feel I should warn the morris dancers who will no doubt be dancing this weekend for modern May Day celebrations to be careful. Handkerchiefs are clearly lethal in the wrong hands.

I will, of course be looking into the antics of our own Greenwich Morris Men,who seductively promised me a "dawn dance at the donkey rides" this morning on their website, but neglected to say what time it was so I could attend (yes, I know - dawn - but for any time before 8.00am I want specifics...) on another day.

Just as an aside, as I was researching this post, I came across something that made me realise there really is a website for everything out there. I don't necessarily recommend the Sneeze Fetish Forum as a place to spend quality time with your family, but I guess it gives hope to all those hayfever sufferers who hate this time of year - yes, guys, there are people who acutally get turned on by your wheezing...

Underground Greenwich (7) - An 18th Century Spat

Right folks. Today, I am going to whisk you back to the Age of Elegance. To the days when gentlemen wear periwigs, breeches and velvet frock coats, ladies titter behind their fans and the harpsichord rocks.

But underneath all that face paint, pox-patch and wig-powder, all is not well within Greenwich's upper echelons. Or maybe I should say 'lower...'

Much lower. Because once again Blackheath Cavern is causing a furore.

It is, as always, all down to cash - the usual playground arguments over who gets to mine the (frankly sub-standard - Sir Christopher Wren won't touch the stuff) chalk from the cave. For even if Sir Chris is being fussy, there are plenty of developers who aren't - London's still being rebuilt after the Great Fire and there's always going to be someone who doesn't mind buying cheap chalk.

The Steers family is mining that chalk - and has been for years. Bill Steers and his old mum are fined regularly for undermining the King's Highway or failing to support their extensive tunnels but they are mere pawns. There are bigger hitters in the chalk game and they are soon to come to blows...

Firstly, there's The Crown - Lord of the Manor of East Greenwich - who, despite there not actually having been a monarch-in-residence for, ahem, some years, still owns much of the town and claims that the chalk being dug out of Maidenstone Hill is effectively waste from Royal land.

Limbering-up for a good ol' punch-up, though, are the new (ish) boys on the block, the Trustees of Morden College, Lords of the Manor of "Old Court." The Trust has also busily bought-up land around Greenwich and is playing the "good causes" card. They, of course, argue that the lime is waste from their land, their having gained dispensation from "the Queen" (Which Queen? Don't ask me...)

The Crown points out that Old Court isn't actually a manor at all - and as such it can have no waste. By the mid 18th century, they're getting nowhere and it all gets handed over to The Lawyers.

Now, there's nothing particularly unusual about a lands-right fracas, but what amuses me, as I read John Stone's 1914 lecture notes, is the surreal direction the whole argument then takes.

Let's get in The Tardis (bagsy not be Donna...) and set the dial to - oh, I don't know - about 1750.

Scribbling furiously at his Chippendale desk, lit by a single tallow candle, sits Mr Brand, Treasurer and Principle Agent of Morden College. (I wonder if, in years to come, Brand Street will be named for him in thanks for Pedantry Beyond The Call Of Duty?) His quill is a blur of feather and ink as he scratches a letter to his opposite number. He talks about the Steers family's discovery and exploitation of the mines - implying that they are working for Morden College. So far, so good.

But then he takes an interesting tangent. He goes on to talk about the workings from the point of view of people from the future. He says:

"...an accidental discovery of them two or three centuries hence, when the occasion of them is forgot may supply curious matter of speculation for the antiquarians."

Ok - so it's a bit oblique, but frankly, that sentence is just a phrase - it means nothing. If I had been Mr Roberts, the Crown's Chief Steward, reading that missive over a morning cuppa in the local Coffee House, a copy of Lloyd's List beckoning and half a dozen coddled quails' eggs going cold in the dish, I wouldn't have thought anything of it.

But no. He takes great exception to it - clearly realising Mr Brand is implying future generations will think Morden College morally superior to The Crown. So he too grabs his quill and gets straight to the point:

"In 1699 you encroached on another part of it and therewith granted, as you say, the very entrails of the hill, the loam, gravel, chalk and sand, which was dug in subterranean caverns under the very summit of it, the discovery whereof, as you very prettily observe, if accidentally made two or three centuries hence, would supply curious matter of speculation for the antiquarians."

These guys are arguing over what WE will think of them. Not who's in the right in their own time, but what Posterity will say. Am I reading too much into this or is that just weird? Mr Roberts is truly riled over the issue. He continues:

"However this ingenious letter, if it should happen to outlive the common fate of things of this sort, will set those inquisitions into antiquity to right."

He neatly brings his argument back on course:

" The misfortune of it will be that if this letter and certificate live to rectify the antiquarians of future times, which it is very likely with this dispute between the Crown and the Trustees it may do, it will show that Mr Brand had too little regard to antiquity, who in looking into the title his clients had to this hill and to the subterranean caverns under it, looked only into the two Queen's grants and their own, without going so far back into antiquity as the grants to Eldred and Whitmore etc."

So. We're back to history again. Their history - that will tell them who has owned the land before them. Something concrete over which they can argue.

But what I love about this little flurry is that it shows something I haven't seen up until that correspondence - an awareness or, indeed, interest in what is to come.

Most writings I have ever seen about - well - pretty much anything before this, are concerned only with the day. With people's own times. They are too busy living their lives to have any interest in things other than their immediate future. But these letters deal with something more - the idea of what will happen two or three hundred years ahead of them.

The way I see it is that this is more than an argument over land - to me, it's a sign that concepts of The Enlightenment were beginning to pervade Society at all levels - even to prosaic areas such as land rights. With the coming of things such as travel (for the wealthy, obviously) The Grand Tour and questions about religion, philosophy and scientific experimentation; with discoveries of everything from Pompeii to sundry diggings in Greenwich Park, has come the birth of Antiquarianism, and with that an awareness of one's own place in history. These men are not content to have the matter dealt with for their own time. For them it's important to be seen by Posterity as having been morally in the right.

Ooops - sorry. I seem to have had a bit of a Melvyn Bragg moment there. Better go and have a sit down and a nice cup of that marvellous new invention, chocolate...

St Alfege's Church Tower...

...in a parallel universe. An alternative world where, during the building of an alternative Nicholas Hawksmoor church in an alternative Greenwich, the cash didn't run out when they got to the roof.

It goes like this. The magnificent St Alfeges - the church of the Tudor Court, of Thomas Tallis, of Samuel Pepys, gradually fell to pieces when Royalty abandoned Greenwich and though it was occasionally patched up, it finally got so bad that on one particular dark and stormy night in 1710 the nave fell in.

Greenwich by now was quite poor and the parishioners petitioned for some of the Coal Tax, which they'd been paying for the past 40 years to pay for the rebuilding of St Pauls Cathedral after the Great Fire, to be given to them for a new church. They got their way - but the act passed in 1711 for fifty new London churches underestimated the cost of a large government building project (sound familiar?)

Certainly there wasn't enough in the coffers for St Alfeges to have Nicholas Hawksmoor's designs built exactly as he wanted them. The governors took the plans for the main, classical-style building but, after shaking the parish piggy bank as hard as they could, sent the tower/steeple plans back.

Hawksmoor stuffed the tower plans back in his pocket, shrugged and went on to the next project. In a spot of masterly architectural recycling, when he got the commission for St George's In The East, he dusted off the plans for St Alfege's, added and subtracted a few bits and bobs and passed them off as brand new. So it could be said that the splendid Shadwell church has Greenwich's cast-off tower. Or, more depressingly, that The East End could afford a steeple when we could only press snotty noses against the glass of Hawksmoor's shop window.

Whichever, we did finally get a tower - in 1730, designed by John James. I have heard sniffy comments made about this one being too 'fancy' for Hawksmoor's austere building, but me, I think it looks just fine. And it's got a clock, so yah-boo-sucks. We all know what it looks like, so instead of a straight photo, here's Theatre of Wine's glorious version created for last year's Advent Windows:


St George's has a chequered history, especially in the 1850s when a rector introduced 'Romish practices' and demonstrations ensued - men with barking dogs marched into church wearing hats and smoking pipes and chucked rubbish at the altar to the sound of catcalls and horn-blowing and much Unpleasantness ensued.

Both churches came off badly in WWII. I'll come to St Alfege's another day, but poor old St George's was so damaged that only the outside (a curious, slightly Italianate but nevertheless very London building) is left - inside, a post-war version squats unobtrusively behind its white stone walls.

It was a nice day yesterday so I took a little trip to see it. It's on the south end of Cannon Street Road, about five minute's walk from Shadwell DLR and it's got a little park around it. If you do the same, it's worth wandering around the area to see the remaining buildings around Cable St (and the fabulous Wilton's Music Hall.)

Victorian Unpleasantness

The whole subject of London's First Railway (from London Bridge to Greenwich) is so huge and so beset with be-anoraked enthusiasts who will jump on me at the drop of a rivet that I confess I've skirted around the issue so far. I will, one day, get round to the fun and games around its birth, but for now, I'm content to enjoy a newspaper article I've found which is so wonderfully outraged that it puts us to shame today...

The London - Greenwich railway opened in 1836 and was an instant hit. It was especially popular on Bank Holidays when Greenwich Park became a riotous, joyous mayhem for thousands of cockney daytrippers, but the railway men had already had their beady eyes on expansion out into Kent for some time.

As far back as February that year, The Greenwich Gazette had been utterly fuming about the idea of an extension to Gravesend "cutting up of three great towns in order to effect a clumsy passage to a water-side place not half the size of either of them." It was, the paper blustered, "so preposterous a suggestion that none but a madman could have engendered it."

The paper couldn't decide which way it would hate the new railway to sear through Greenwich most. The good burghers of Greenwich certainly detested the idea of it going underground - "so that the passers along The Broadway, London Street, Nelson Street and Powis Street should be just upon a level with the tops of the houses." At this point, with hindsight, one begins to think that Dr Burney, the heroic instigator of the revolt, may just have been one of "those whose prosperity would be deeply affected by the passing of this outrageous measure." And indeed the feature goes on to moan that "the persons by whom this extravagant undertaking is proposed are evidently of that class who care not whose house is on fire so that they may roast their own eggs." It rages on:

"What female of any delicacy could venture into her own garden when she would know that doing so she would expose herself to the vulgar gaze and brutal ribaldry of a set of idle vagabonds enjoying their sixpenny ride?"

So. A class thing, then.

Well, not totally. I had to read a good half way down the article to get to the real problem. And to realise that we actually owe a vote of thanks to these proto-NIMBYS. We eventually get to the nub of the plan about 400 words-in, long after the outrage at the loss of back gardens.

What the developers actually wanted was an overground railway (the cheapest version, of course) - slicing right through Greenwich Park. The idea was that the area roughly around Romney Road should have a giant faux-classical bridge-type thing, with arches taking the railway directly through the middle, raised high above ground. There was a serious chance that "the authorities of the Admiralty will so betray their trust as to suffer that which indefeasibly belongs to the public to be taken away by a set of private speculators."

I find it difficult to imagine this alternative Greenwich. A place without, possibly, The Queen's House (I can't find out whether or not it was planned to demolish it) and with a massive railway viaduct going right through between Greenwich Park and the Old Royal Naval College.

The objectors threw everything they could at it. Destruction of the park, offence to pensioners, smog, loss of the naval school, nasty poor people leering out of windows brandishing buckets and spades, the vibration of the earth by heavy steam engines wobbling telescopes and "endangering experimental science, which would be looked upon in no other light than a national sacrifice."

In a strident call-to-arms, The Gazette suggests likely local people who would be good to get on board to defeat the Act in Parliament. This was war. The paper stops short of advocating violence, but says, and then repeats in capitals "THERE IS NO POSSIBLE MEANS OF COUNTERACTION THAN IN BRINGING DOWN MEMBERS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE QUESTION."

Doctor Burney, with his "unsullied honesty of heart" appears to be the Wat Tyler (or perhaps the Jack Cade) of the railway but the piece ends on an ominous note. It took me a moment to realise that the entire article talks about him in the past tense, and it is in the penultimate sentence that I begin to realise why the feature is written with such venom. The Gazette darkly intones:

"Now, for the Doctor - but no: we will leave him till next week. He is deserving of a separate article.

It is sufficient at present to state that Doctor Burney has withdrawn his opposition, ' in consequence of the very liberal offer made to him by the Directors.' So it turns out that the Doctor, like those whose virtue is to be had at so much a yard, has only been writing for a larger mess of pottage - FOR AN INCREASE OF THE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER."

Blimey. I now HAVE to find out more about this guy. My search is on for the next Gazette feature. They just don't write 'em like that any more. In the meanwhile. I wonder. Is he anything to do with Burney Street? Could he have sold-out his neighbours in exchange for literal street-cred?

The good news is that, with or without their fallen hero, the protesters won, forcing the railway to tunnel underground through the ancient part of Greenwich. But that's for another day...

Workshops for the Blind

Benedict asked me about this so long ago that I'm embarrassed to admit that I've only just got to it today. He says:

"I am always intrigued by the old bits of carved masonry that sit in the Clock Tower Market area. There is a sign saying they were from the old Workshops for the Blind. Do you know any more?"

The Phantom replies:

I've not been able to find out huge amounts, but here's what I've gleaned so far. They were set up in 1877 as Workshops for the Blind of Kent by the fabulously-monikered Major-General PJ Bainbrigge, R.E. It started out with 15 blind workmen (I can't find any evidence of women)

It seems to have been pretty much where the horrid Ibis Hotel is now (God, I hate that chain,) and the various ornate bits of masonry that lie around the place are indeed from the old workshops. I can't find any pictures of its exterior, though there is one of the interior in Mary Mills's book Greenwich and Woolwich at Work, showing a large tiled room with various men in shirtsleeves making wickerware - baskets, shopping bags and chairs. There's a letter in an old edition of Greenwich Industrial History Society's bulletin from Beryl Mason, whose father worked there. She talks about a shop attached to the workshops where people could buy the baskets.

The business grew slowly - from 20 workers in 1911 to 41 in 1930. I suspect there may have been an increase, too, after WWII. I can't quite work out when the business was moved to Eastney St - what is now Feathers Place, but when it did, they branched into making mattresses and rope 'fendoffs' for ships. According to Beryl Mason, who visited her father at the workshops, they worked in the cold and dark - saving on lighting - (though as far as I know blind people feel the cold as much as anyone else...)

By the 1970s, blind people were finding work in the sighted world and demand for specific jobs 'for them' was falling. When the workshops finally closed, the foreman, a 'local character' known only as 'Jim,' started a basketware shop in Greenwich High Road. I have no idea where it was.

So there you have it Benedict. Bet you'd forgotten you asked that one...

Trinovantum

Cast your minds back, folks, three thousand-odd years, to 1100BC. Or thereabouts. To a guy called Brutus, who lived in Troy. Young Brutus had itchy feet. He wanted to travel. To see the world. Of course there wasn't that much world to see in those days, so he needed to go and discover some first. He went on lots of adventures all through Europe and finally crossed the channel to a new country.


Geoffrey of Monmouth reckons that when Brutus arived it was totally uninhabited by humans, but there were a few giants knocking around. He saw them off, and trudged his way up the banks of the Thames looking for a suitable place to build himself a city. Most people, including Geoffrey himself, have assumed that the city of Trinovantum was on the site of what became London, but there are some strange holes in the story.


For starters there's bugger-all prehistoric archaeological evidence in the City of London itself - though of course that could have been obliterated by more recent building. But other accounts just don't feel right either, and there are some who argue that the once-great city was actually at Greenwich. It fits with much of the storytelling at least - the river, the settlement on flat ground and the wooded hills rising up above it where the evil King Mempricius met a sticky end, devoured by wolves.


Even the Blackheath Cavern gets a look-in. Brutus's son Locrin fell in love with a German maiden captured from the Huns. But as luck would have it, he was already engaged to the daughter of the King of Cornwall. Typical. He had to go through with the wedding for the sake of appearances, but he still wanted his end away with the beautiful Estrildis so he hid her in a great underground cavern and visited her for seven years under the pretext of 'making sacrifices to the gods...' Yeah. That old one.


Then there was Bladud, the founder of Bath. He was a necromancer and the fabled father of King Lear. He fancied his chances as an aeronaut and made himself some wings. He took off from a great hill which some suggest could have been One Tree Hill. Gravity won, and he ended up dashed to pieces on the temple of Apollo (the Sun God, making Bladud a British Icarus, perhaps?) in Trinovantum.


Later historians who tried to square Geoffrey of Monmouth's story (he did live about 2,000 years too late) to the London of today had a particularly trying time with "the tower of Trinovantum," trying to shoehorn the Tower of London to fit, even though it was the wrong date and in the wrong place. But Greenwich Hill, where the Observatory stands now, has long been the site of a tower, and it's likely that Duke Humphrey's wasn't the first. If it is there, then there are several dead prehistoric king buried underneath it (don't look to the mounds - they're anglo-saxon.)


When Caesar invaded, he defeated the Britons 'near a place called Trinovantum.' Could it have been Greenwich? After all, the 1st Century historian Cassius Dio describes the loss of Roman troops as they follow the Britons across the Thames 'at a point near where it empties into the ocean and at flood tide forms a lake.' At that time the Thames would have been fordable at Greenwich.


So. Fariy story or archaeological possibility? Your guess is as good as mine...

The Pagoda

Pagoda Gardens, SE3

I was saving this entry until June (I'll explain why later), but Benedict sent me such a fantastic picture with his question that I've escalated it to now.

He asks:

On a rare morning of no responsibilities my partner and I went for an unstructured ramble around the not so familiar environs and - blow me down - gor blimey - I have never seen this before , but it's obviously been in Blackheath since 1800s. A Georgian Pagoda!!! What on earth is/was it?

The Phantom replies:

Astoundingly, just put the definite article in front of it and that's exactly what it is - THE Pagoda, Benedict. And no - it's not been there since the 1800s - it's been there since the 1700s - 1767, in fact. It was built for the Duke of Montague at a time when everything Oriental was fashionable. It was called chinoiserie - though that term was used for everything that came from the East, not just China.

In fact, if we're being honest, they didn't really much care about authenticity at all - it was the flavour 18th Century stylists were after, not the precise style. All they knew was that all the things they liked - from fabulous silks and exquisite vases to the tea being loaded from massive ships at East India Dock - came from this exotic all-purpose 'Orient.' Many country houses have a 'Chinese' room, decorated with dainty wallpaper, screens, bamboo furniture and porcelain.

And they built their summer houses - for this was what The Pagoda originally was - a grandiose garden shed for Montague House which, if memory serves, was at the South West corner of Greenwich Park, next door-ish to Rangers House - in what they assumed was oriental style, too. They used all the bits of Western building they liked, and just added funky bits and bobs, like curly roofs and moon windows that would make it look Chinese/Japanese/Whatever.

You can still see them from time to time - Heal in Wiltshire, for example, has a fabulous oriental garden with a delightful 'tea house' - more English than Chinese but when it's as pretty as that, who cares?

I have heard that the Blackheath Pagoda was used by saucy Princess Caroline of Brunswick though whether this was before or after the Prince Regent turfed her out of Montague House I don't know. It was certainly used as a hunting lodge though, by one Henry Scott, third Duke of Buccleuch.

The poor old place eventually fell into disrepair - the Victorians weren't that bothered by the oriental style, presumably too busy dealing opium to import flowers and vases. It got passed from pillar to post, even being used as a convent school at one point, I vaguely remember; its final indignity being London County Council building a housing estate right up to its gates over its once-massive grounds in the 1950s.

I don't know when the formal Oriental garden was built - presumably around the same-ish time as the house - any info on that would be gratefully received, though, as to me it looks quite turn-of-the-20th Century. But whatever the original gardens looked like, they didn't last long. It turned into a market garden at one point, covered with greenhouses, and finally became totally overgrown.

And this is where the June bit comes in. The present owners, the Coopers, discovered the dilapidated mansion in 1991 (what does that sort of thing never happen to me?) and renovated it to its current state. Luckily, they were also into gardening and started hacking back the dense undergrowth, where they found the old retaining walls of a formal water garden and they set about restoring it. It's now a fine, mature secret corner in classic British-Oriental style.

Best of all, we can actually get to see it - once a year in June, when they open it as part of the National Gardens Scheme. It's a lovely evening event, where you can wander round with a glass of wine in your hand, soaking-in the bright red pergolas, stone water channels, and exotic plants - wisteria, palms and lotus-flowers.

I try to get there every year - as much to admire the building as anything, (don't miss the wonderful, huge round windows...) and I will let you know the precise date when I've got my sweaty paws on this year's Yellow Book. Devote the entire evening to the event - there are two other gardens, each exquisite in its own way, within walking distance of the Pagoda, that most considerately coincide their openings.

I'm usually a bit wobbly by the time I've visited all three. Aw - c'mon - it's drinking-for-charity. It would be rude not to...

Elizabeth I And The Stinking Peasants

Cast your imaginations back 436 years, folks, to Maundy Thursday 1572, and picture the scene.

Good Queen Bess sits upon the throne at Greenwich Palace, chuckling to herself, enjoying the fact that there are only a couple of days of tedious Lenten fasting to go. And yet even as she dreams of Sucking Pig and Greate Pye, an unfortunate courtier is very gingerly making his way towards the Royal Ear, knowing that as soon as he whispers in it, his own will be somewhat thicker. But someone's got to do it; someone's got to remind the sovereign of one of the less enjoyable of her regal duties...

All the way back to at least Edward II, it had been the tradition for the monarch to wash the feet of the same number of poor people as their age. What's worse, they had to kiss said feet afterwards, to prove their humility before God. The tradition went all the way back to the 8th Century, when monks started washing grubby-old dark-age plebs' tootsies in memory of Christ washing those of the disciples, and Elizabeth knew there was no getting out of it. The very word 'Maundy' comes from the Latin "mandatum."

It wasn't so much the rest of the ceremony that bothered her. She didn't care about the money - twenty shillings in alms given to each pauper, wrapped in a red leather purse. She didn't mind the food - a gift of half a side of salmon, the same again of lyng (presumably some other fish) six red herrings and a cheat loafe, which the fabulous Old Foodie blog tells me was bread made with leaven saved from an earlier batch of baking, and, as far as I understand, kneaded with the feet, which makes sense considering what the whole Maundy gig was about.

Elizabeth didn't even care about having to fork our for other gifts - "certain yards of broadcloth to make a gown," a pair of shoes and a wooden platter. But those feet...

There was only one thing for it. To have a minion carefully select the least-smelly peasants, and have them thoroughly pre-washed. Three times.

The Yeoman of the Laundry copped the least desirable chore - the initial scrub to tackle the worst of the grime, fleas, worms, whatever. The Sub-Almoner then got to try to polish them up a bit, and mask the pong with sweet herbs before the Almoner did the final tweaking of the toes. Only then did the Queen, presumably from the furthest distance possible, dip her own pinkies into nice-smelling water and splash a few drops onto the rustic appendages thrust before her and pucker up to bestow the lightest of pecks from the royal lips.

The irony is, that I doubt the peasants much cared whether their feet were clean anyway - after all they were only going to step in the usual animal crap, discarded cabbage leaves, 'nightsoil' etc. as soon as they left the palace and stepped into the filthy Greenwich streets anyway. They would have been just as happy to forgo the washing-and kissing and cut straight to the cash.

Which is what eventually happened. Today, Elizabeth II merely gives specially-minted coins to the sum of her years to the same number of 'poor people,' though in a typically British throwback, she's still followed around by a lackey with a towel. I can only assume that no one's had the heart to tell him that his job's a bit redundant these days. I have no idea how you get to be one of the lucky recipients, given the number of below-poverty-line candidates there are to choose from.

Even less do I know why The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, reinstated the foot-washing thing for himself in 2003. Surely they have websites for that kind of thing...

The Sad Story of Admiral Byng

29 Oct, 1704 - 14 March 1757

Today marks the 251st anniversary of the execution of Admiral John Byng - a loyal man sent to battle with inadequate supplies (sound familiar at all?) and still an embarrassment to the MoD.

It all started out well enough. Byng went to sea at the age of 14. His father was the Viscount of Torrington who had carefully nailed his colours to the right mast in supporting William III's bid for the throne and had made it to the top as an admiral himself. Young John was determined to follow his father's example and was soon a rising young seadog. He quickly became a lieutenant and then a captain at 23. He was clearly able - even if carrying the Byng name probably did him no harm at all at meetings of the promotions board...

He led a pretty comfortable career until the Seven Years War - a series of cushy jobs and straightforward ships hadn't brought him into any real problems.

Byng was in the English Channel when he was told he needed to hotfoot it to Minorca where the dastardly French had just invaded what was at the time a British territory. He took one look at the ships he was supposed to sail, and realised that they were total wrecks. He complained repeatedly as the money, ships - and, crucially, time were just not forthcoming from the government. What was worse, they faffed around unnecessarily while he and his men kicked their heels waiting for their orders, cutting down on preparation time. He kept asking for proper equipment and a sensible amount of troops, but ended up setting out with 10 leaking ships completely undermanned.

When he actually got to Minorca, it got worse. He was relieved of what troops he had to relieve someone else's garrison. It was quite cleared his ass would get whooped if he met the French and he wrote home to that effect. Still the governor of Gibraltar refused to send any more troops.

After a skirmish with the French, Byng's ships were indeed in shrebbons and the losses were huge. The nearest port was Gibraltar so he set off there to get his ships repaired. It was at this point it all went horribly wrong. His limping fleet was intercepted by another ship from Britain, which assumed Byng was running away, took over the job - and poor old Byng into custody.

Minorca fell anyway and the Navy was outraged. English law had just been changed, which made failing to do one's utmost against an enemy, either in battle or pursuit, a capital offence. At the court martial, it was pointed out that Byng had not done his utmost - he had failed to chase, with his tiny broken fleet, the enormous undamaged French flotilla.

The court martial was forced to sentence to him death, acquitted of personal cowardice and disaffection, but still guilty of failing to do his utmost. They told him they were powerless against the new Article of Law but suggested he go to the House of Commons to ask George II for clemency. The House agreed, but George II (whose statue, by the way, stands in the centre of the Old Royal Naval College) was unmoved. On hearing the House of Commons had recommended mercy he said "You have taught me to look for the sense of my people elsewhere than in the House of Commons." Byng was to be shot.

He was kept in Queen Anne's Court, manacled to a wall overlooking the Thames, whilst awaiting his death. Malcolm Godfrey reckons that his is the most prolific ghost in Greenwich - repeated sightings in various areas around his final lodgings have been reported for years. Amazingly, he's not malevolent - he's always a very polite and helpful spectre, holding doors open for people and handing workmen their tools.

Admiral John Byng was shot on board his own ship a hundred and fifty one years ago today. His death prompted Voltaire to write in Candide that the British liked to shoot admirals on an occasional basis "pour encourager les autres..."

I'm glad to say that Byng is not forgotten even today. Shaun sent me a link to a BBC article which mentions that a petition has been launched to gain him a posthumous pardon. So far there's been no dice from the Navy. Presumably it would encourager les autres...

The King's House

Sir Christopher Wren did such a great botch-job on what is now The Old Royal Naval College, that most people tend to assume it was all built at the same time. Truth is, one of the four main courts of Greenwich Hospital is considerably older than the other three, and it was only after eating a slice of humble pie (the recipe of which modern architects could use a taste) that Wren actually came up with what we have today.

It was all a bit of a mess, really. Duke Humphrey's Bella Court (now firmly underneath the lawns at the ORNC) had been subsumed into Placentia, prettied-up by Margaret of Anjou and enjoyed by sundry monarchs up to James I (or VI of Scotland, if you're being picky.) But by the time he was building The Queen's House for his wife (who most ungratefully died before it was finished) poor old Placentia was looking pretty feeble. James, being a weak and feeble type (accused by one contemporary of having 'spindly legs,' no less) found the maritime air of Greenwich too bracing and the damp worsened his aches and pains, so he upped sticks to Whitehall. Placentia sat and rotted. Charles I's wife Henrietta Maria found it more to her taste - but stuck to the Queen's House.

Cromwell sold off everything he could during the Commonwealth, and allowed his soldiers to vandalise the old palace to such an extent that when Charles II came to inspect what was left in 1661, it was a pile in the truest meaning of the word. The place was so neglected that the rusty old gates had to be broken open for him.

The Queen's House was to be finished - even if now Henrietta Maria was somewhat older - a sad Miss Haversham-esque dowager attended by twenty four gentlemen in black velvet. Her son just wanted a new place. Work began on 4th March, 1664. Samuel Pepys was most excited. "I observed the laying of a very great house for the King," he wrote, adding "which will cost a great deal of money."

Pepys was right on the nail, as always. John Webb, the architect, had a grand plan to build it as a grand, three-sided affair, but, in truth everyone knew it was going to be difficult enough to manage just the one.

Like many of Charles's Big Ideas, the King's House ran into financial difficulties almost immediately. It was a building site for bloomin' years. When Pepys came to stay in Greenwich on 24th August 1665, trying to get away from the Plague, he was planning on taking rooms in the palace, but had to content himself elsewhere, as it was nowhere finished.

After three years £26,433 had been spent, and it still wasn't complete. It didn't help that Charles was a veritable butterfly - starting projects all over the shop, then flitting onto the next - The Observatory being a case in point. By 1669, Pepys was used to there being nowhere for him when he came to Greenwich. He wearily wrote that it "goes on slow, but is very pretty."

The East Wing of the King's House was finally done in 1669. But by this point the world had moved on.

William and Mary were on the throne. Mary wanted to turn the place into a seaman's hospital, and commissioned Sir Christopher Wren to design it. He came up with an enormous plan that would flatten both the Queen's and King's houses and create an enormous grid-affair of buildings. Mary would hear nothing of it - she wanted to keep the King's house - and the view from her own gaff. So Wren swallowed his pride, moulding his ideas and ego to fit what was already there.

I ask you. If Sir Christopher Wren could work with old, historic buildings already standing and make something new, vibrant, exciting and relevant out of them, why can't today's architects do the same thing? Take the - Victorian, say, buildings we have and adapt them for today's purposes instead of imposing their conceits and arrogance on us and insisting on razing what is already there to flatter their petty egos?

But I digress yet again. Back to the King's House.



It's serious stuff. Heavily classical - pediments, columns, rustications - and with no doubt about its instigator - Carolus II Rex enscribed in giant letters on the river-side. It's definitely best seen in blazing sunshine or, as photographed at the top by Stevie, by night, when its floodlit severity pays dividends against the black night sky. Inside is the Admiral's House (for another day) and Trinity College of Music (ditto...) The interior courtyard, still quaintly cobbled, feels more out-of-another-era than the rest of it, and always seems to have a snogging couple lurking in the shadows somewhere whenever I walk through. Aahhhh.

Don't you just take one look at Stevie's picture and think what a great place we live in?

Nelson's Secret Room...

The Painted Hall

Back in 1805, The nation was in mourning, just as they should have been celebrating. Trafalgar was won - but at the cost of their blue-eyed boy.

Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson deserves several posts - Heaven knows, he's inspired hundreds of books and a fan club that exists to this day (I must go to a Trafalgar Dinner one day. A friend of mine belongs to the 1805 Society and it sounds an extraordinary experience...) I want to spend much more time on Our Horatio over the coming months but for now, I'd like to look through the keyhole of one of Greenwich's little secrets - hidden right under the noses of the thousands of tourists who visit the Painted Hall.

But back to 1805. Nelson's body was brought back to England, pickled, as legend has it, in a barrel of brandy, from which his men snuck the odd tipple along the way (drinking to his memory, I'm sure...) He was brought to the Painted Hall, where the morticians were given the uphill task of getting him into a fit condition to lie in state before he was buried with full military honours in St Pauls Cathedral.

It wasn't going to be easy. For starters, the brandy had been "refreshed" in Gibraltar with even stronger stuff, and by the time he'd arrived back in Chatham, he'd been dead for, ahem, some time, bundled into a recycled coffin made out of his old bed. They couldn't just dump him in the middle of the Painted Hall like that. He must have smelled like a distilllery for starters...



It was decided the best thing they could do was to use a little room at the side of the hall, which was currently used as a dumping ground for the sort of old tat that we all have knocking around some nasty cupboard somewhere. They had a Life Laundry moment, decluttering the old Archive, finding 'somewhere else' for the piles of books and ledgers; chucking out the shelving. The body, having arrived inconveniently on Christmas Eve, was taken inside, and put under armed guard, while everyone else enjoyed the festive season. I have such images of the poor sods standing outside that room over Christmas.

"Leg or breast, Private Jones?"
"Funny, Sir, I seem to have lost my appetite."
"A sip of brandy, then? It is Christmas, after all, man.."
"Ho, Ho, Ho, Sir."
(Nelson turns in his barrel)
"Did you hear that knocking sound, Jones..?"

With the holiday period over and 1806 rung-in, the rest of the place became a flurry of jet-black ostrich plumes, satin, coats of arms, gilding and escutcheons. Elsewhere, the undertaker, ironically, one Mr France, built a fabulous coffin, decorated with ten thousand brass nails, and took the opportunity of displaying it in his shop window.

The Hall was draped in extravagant sobriety - plumes, feathers and regalia, dominated by a great catafalque, heavy with symbolism, where the great man's body lay, but Nelson himself, dead for well over two months by now, was easily the star of the show.

For three days, lit by sconced candles, England's hero lay in state. No one knows exactly how many people strained against the crash barriers outside to file past, but even the measliest estimate is 15,000. Many reckon it was double that. They came by boat, by cart, by foot (no railway then.)

The funeral flotilla that accompanied the national hero along the Thames up to the City was recreated back in 2005 (they bodged the date a bit, making it, for some strange reason, happen on neither Trafalgar Day nor Nelson's real funeral anniversary) and although it was spectacular, it was also perishing cold, and, as with the original funeral, horribly held up whilst they waited for sundry bigwigs to arrive. The school party I was standing next to waited for hours in the freezing cold and then had to go home without seeing anything. I waited to the bitter end and it was worth it, even if I did begin to wonder whether the whole thing had been cooked up to get people to visit the cafe to warm up afterwards.


But one very good thing that came out of the bicentenery was the restoration of that little side room. Despite its illustrious fifteen minutes (or days) of fame, the Nelson Room went back to being a store cupboard and became largely forgotten. The fabulous little annex, part of the original design of the Painted Hall, was spruced-up with tasteful shades of paint, it's elegant little domed roof restored to perfection. In an original niche, which had always been empty, a giant (modern) statue of Nelson was placed, along with paintings and memorabilia, and as the centrepiece, a model of the Painted Hall as it looked for those heady three days in 1806 was added for good measure.

It was open to all during 2005 (or was it 2006? No matter - it's not now...) but for some strange, extremely arcane reason that was explained to me once by a tour guide, the only way to see it today is to go on one of the guided tours of the Old Royal Naval College. (The ORNC would like to open it for free, but, due to some charity/tax/obscure financial-type reason, they have to charge for something...) The tours are by the way, well worth it - they also include the skittle alley and crypt.

The guide will point out all the good bits, but there's one thing visible from the window, that you shouldn't miss. For this is also the very best way to see the Nelson Pediment, which - and you'll be used to this by now - I will write about another day.

I leave you with one last thought. Stevie sent me an intriguing picture this morning, which could throw an interesting light on the whole affair. Take a look at this plaque. A close look.



Just what was in that barrel again?

General James Wolfe

1727 - 1759

I have been holding out writing about General Wolfe, a local superhero for local people, for some time, for reasons which may be apparent if you look to the right of the screen. I have always thought his was a wonderful statue, standing eerily sentinal at the top of Greenwich Hill, keeping silent watch over the town. Although he wasn't actually born in Greenwich, he was brought up and lived here, and the town is littered with Wolfe-abilia.

Wolfe was the classic action man - the Sylvester Stallone of Greenwich - always on the move, always itching to get going, always striding in where, perhaps, if he'd thought it through, he might have been a bit more circumspect. At least one brigadier thought he was bonkers, and said so within the earshot of George II. The King retorted "Mad is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other generals."

On the other hand, he wasn't all Rambo. There was definitely some Tom Hanks in him. When fighting at Culloden, he defied his commanding officer, by refusing to shoot a wounded Highlander, saying that his honour was worth more than his commission. A metaphorically square-jawed hero, then, even if, bless him, his was not a face best reproduced in profile...

Born in Westerham, he moved to Greenwich at twelve years old, when his parents bought MacCartney House. It's still there, one of the Phantom's fantasy residences, all wisteria-covered and leafy, backing onto the Park. There's a blue plaque on the wall, but I'll leave the house itself for another day - it deserves a post of its own. He lived here in between being a hero at various wars - you know - sort you've heard of but couldn't actually say what they were about. He was a soldier's soldier - and as the campaigns continued he became well-respected by all (including the Scots, who'd not forgotten his gallant behaviour at Culloden) even if many privately thought he was a few troops short of a batallion.

Of course, what he's really famous for is his heroic victory (and death) at Quebec. Wolfe shares with Nelson the dubious honour of being mortally wounded just at the point of National Supremacy, thus securing him eternal hero status.

Imagine the scene in the classic heist/war/intelligence movie. You know - the "It can't be done" moment, where, in the tent of the commanding officer, someone important tells the hero all the obstacles that lie in the face of success. There has been stalemate for three months as the British holds Quebec in siege. The fortress, even if you could get into it, is built like the Chateau D'If, but it is surrounded by deadly waters and unclimbable cliffs. If you get past the cliffs, there are several cannons aimed straight at you. And if you get past all that, there's still a vast number of highly trained Canadian troops waiting to bayonet you at their convenience. (For a more European-cinema version of the story, check out Benedict in the comments section, but for now, I'm sticking to the Hollywood Hokum, 'cause it's more fun to write.)

As in all the best Hollywood Saturday-nighters, Wolfe wasn't having any of that. By now, he was George Clooney. In a dazzling montage of derring-do, Wolfe and his troops crept along a secret path in the dead of night and scaled the cliffs below the towering fortress of Quebec. After a thrilling climax of buckling and swash, they captured the castle, thus securing British interests. But by now, he was John Wayne. In slow-motion closeup, accompanied by stirring classical music, a bullet struck him in the chest.

Of course, he was allowed a death-scene close-up, supported by grieving soldiers. His final words were, of the enemy, "What - do they run already? Then I die happy."

He was brought back to Greenwich where his body lay in state; a national hero. It somehow seems a shame that when, a quarter of a century later another national hero also lay in state in Greenwich, Admiral Lord Nelson managed to eclipse his illustrious forbear (though Wolfe does still have, like Nelson, a fan club. The Wolfe Society, much like the 1805 Society, meets annually for a formal dinner, celebrating his Pious and Immortal Memory. I intend to find out more about this curious club...)

James Wolfe is buried in St Alfege's Church. Don't bother trying to find him in the graveyard; he's in the crypt, which is another one of those places I'd like to see on London Open House Day...

A word about the statue. There had been murmurings of a there needing to be an eye-catcher at the top of the hill for some time - and in its day, potential subject matter received as many column inches as the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square today. One of the suggestions included a 200ft colossus of Britannia. The final sculpture is by Dr Tait Mackenzie and wasn't actually unveiled until 1930, though perhaps the time-lapse was a good thing, given the unveling was done by the Marquis de Montcalm, a direct descedant of Wolfe's opponent at that final siege.

The monument was rather near the business-end of a bomb in WWII, the results of which can still be seen on the plinth, making General James Wolfe possibly the only British soldier to have received schrapnel wounds in major wars 200 years apart.

For some time I found the cloaked silhouette with swashbuckling boots and mysterious tricorn hat slightly sinister, but now I can only see his as a benign presence.

In my imagination, on a clear, starry night, I see