The Quiet Meridian

There's been a lot of hoo-ha about the Meridian recently (its 125th anniversary was last year). And if you go to the Observatory on any day of the year you'll find hoards of tourists queuing up to straddle the shiny line representing the imaginary delineation between East and West so their mates can take a picture of them.

I have never seen anyone having their photo taken straddling this part of the Meridian line, yet in many ways it's just as charming as the 'big one' and with some really curious stuff to be had in the background...

I don't recall these little plaque/paving/stud markings being created; I'm guessing the millennium - but so much was happening that year, it's impossible to remember everything. Like much that's in Park Vista, not least the Plume of Feathers (or the 'Plumbe' of Feathers as described in the temporary road sign during the Trafalgar Road works) it's 'our' little corner, protected from the bulk of tourists.

While you're there, don't miss the only Tudor building above ground in Greenwich, now part of the vicarage - the wall was specially cut-out by a Victorian vicar so that people could see the plaque on the old conduit head. It's worth seeking out the other plaques and decorations in Park Vista for a bit of fun on the way to the Plume for your Sunday lunch...

Inside Greenwich Power Station

Something a bit special for all you Secret Greenwich fans today, folks. I was absolutely delighted to be contacted yesterday by Peter, who had read about our futile attempts to get inside Greenwich Power Station, our speculations about what might be inside that giant hall - and my Phantom fantasies about the secretive turret that surely must at least contain a Mrs Rochester-style lunatic from a Gothic romance...

Peter tells me "About a year ago now I had the privilege of having what may have been the last tour of the power station before health and safety intervened and put so many barriers in the way of said tours that they may never happen again. A group of us were given a short presentation of the history of the Power Station and got the grand tour that followed, with access to all those little glory holes you never normally see when on a guided tour."

Peter took some photos while he was there, and thought we'd like to see them. He apologises for the quality; the light levels were low, but IMHO he has nothing to worry about - for me, who has never seen any pictures of the interior, it's a revelation to see something so beautiful on our very doorstep, and yet completely impossible to view unless you actually work there.

I mean - just look at this wonderful high ceiling, with the giant, vertigo-inducing gantry spanning it. Presumably the original turbines would have taken up more room than the present ones. "Big rooms of empty space," admits Peter, "a small staff and 7 gas powered Rolls Royce jet engines to run the turbines."

A lot of people think that the power station isn't actually used any more. That's not true - but it's not permanently switched on. "The site only gets run up occasionally to test the jet engines that provide instant power when needed and even more occasionally to provide emergency backup power for the Underground."

Nevertheless, it still requires staff and sadly not, as I've often liked to imagine, Oompa-Loompas. "The site is manned by relatively few people that actually live (some of them) many hours drive away," says Peter. "When they are off-shift they live and sleep in barracks on site...so in an emergency there's often more than just the shift on duty available."

He says that a lot of overdue maintenance is done, as a labour of love, off-shift, as a way to pass the time in the barracks, though he also saw an old Jaguar car resting up under tarpaulins the restoration project of one of the site engineers...sadly there are no pictures.

As a nod to security issues, Peter hasn't included any pictures of the control rooms, but he reckons "really, there was only one thing of interest and that was a beautiful cast iron bracket off a column and supporting a beam above, lovely curves on the webbing of the bracket – other than that it's just grey boxes lights and dials."

But what of that secretive turret, perched, somewhat pointlessly on the south-east edge of the site? Sadly we still don't have an answer. Peter tells me that the cottage (the station manager's house)has been abandoned for years - and someone's lost the key to the tower.

How can they live with such a mystery? There could be anything behind that door. Some day, one of those barracked workers will, in a moment of stir-crazed lunacy, fashion a rudimentary key out of a paperclip and enter another world.

Perhaps he will find the mad master of the station who became trapped and forgotten during the Blitz. Maybe, like Sir Walter Scott who became a national hero rediscovering the lost Scottish crown jewels by looking in a cupboard no one had bothered to try for ages, he will find the great Greenwich Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold. What if there's a magic portal through to a parallel universe, and we don't even know about it?

I can't believe no one's looked, and hope someone does soon. But in the meanwhile, for all you industrial history fans, whilst tipping the spectral tricon to Peter for taking compassion on a frustrated Phantom who's so long wanted to see inside, I leave you with some rivets to enjoy...

More On Gloucester Circus

I don't normally like to return to a subject as quickly as this, but Stephen had some really interesting extras to go with yesterday's Faded Greenwich post (he also has a better pic of the sign - see above.)

He used to live at Number 21 and tells me that the naming of the whole of the oddly-shaped ovalish street as 'Circus' is only relatively recent. If you take a peek at this 1908 map you'll see that only the rounded, south side was originally the Circus; the flatter, northern side, which was hastily finished with any-old buildings after the cash ran out, rather than continuing the elegant, sweeping curve of Searles's vision, was known slightly more prosaically as Gloucester 'Place.'

Stephen tells me his brother remembers a pediment stretching between the two sides, that said 'Circus', but if there was one there, it's long since bombed to buggery in WWII, which destroyed most of the less-pretty north side and more-than-ideal of the south side too. Maybe there are some old photos knocking around. I keep meaning to try and find some pictures of bomb damage in the area.

Faded Greenwich (10)

Actually, not so much 'faded' but ' generally unnoticed,' there's nothing faded about the word "Circus" carved high into the house at the entrance to Gloucester Circus - it's still crisply clear, if you think to look up and find it.

I don't know if it's original to Michael Searles's vision, but I have no reason to believe it's not, and it's good to see it so beautifully looked after. It's actually wrapped around the house's main chimney, relieving the severity of a wall full of blind windows, which must have always have been so - this was right in the middle of the Window Tax years, so they would have been created thus; it's sort of fun to think that filled-in windows had become a valid design feature in themselves by that time, filling an otherwise blank wall.

Perhaps because of the way the circus was built, there isn't a sister word 'Gloucester' on the other side, but then maybe it never was intended to be there. I guess it could just be that the buzz-word of the day, 'circus' was enough to persuade people they were buying into Modernity.

I'll come to the house itself another day, but in the meantime, I'm still looking up, just in case I see another curious thing...

Greenwich Weathervanes (1)

First of a new occasional series today. Considering we're getting a big dollop of pretty much every kind of weather available just now (sun, fog, rain, snow, ice and wind - and that was just yesterday) it seems appropriate to start looking at Greenwich's many weathervanes.

This is one of the most splendid, at the Old Royal Observatory. Inside, the South Building's been turned into a rather fabulous visitor space. Where the old support piles for the heavy equipment used to be, a fantastic spiral staircase winds its way up and underneath sits the Planetarium with its strange-shaped 'dome,' but outside, I'm very glad to see that not only was the beautiful building preserved, but restored.

And on top sits this rather wonderful ship-shape weathervane, whose picture I took with a better camera in better times.


The ship is, according to the NMM website, Henri Grace a Dieu - or the Great Harry to you and me. Henry VIII's flagship was placed atop the dome to indicate the importance of Greenwich to Britain's naval heritage, but I don't know how old it is or who made it.

As usual, I'm sure someone here will know...

Alternative Domes (4)

I honestly don't know what this is/these are. I'm guessing the framework for some kind of gazebo, but in truth your guess is as good as mine.

It's in the back yard of the rather ornate building between Mauritius and Azof Roads, which the eagle-eyed Julian Watson informs me is Rothbury Mission Hall. Darryl Spurgeon describes it as "An extraordinary building of 1893 with a quite fantastic roofline of cupola, thin spirelets and dormers," and I guess that just about sums it up.

Pevsner has nothing to say about the place, but Julian tells me that "according to LAJ Baker in his ‘Churches in the Hundred of Blackheath’ it was built as a Baptist church and was bought by the Congregationalists in the 1890’s."

By the time Life and Labour of the People of London 1890-1900 was written, the final volume of which I found in the "everything £1" box of a secondhand bookshop (you do always check those, don't you...) it had become that Congregational mission.

Charles Booth describes it there as having "a pauperising influence and not effective from the religious standpoint; the Sunday school the principal piece of work, eight hundred children in average attendance; a good deal of money spent on social work."

I can't remember what it is now, but a bell is ringing in my mind that it's a children's nursery or play club or similar - which seems rather fitting. Must get some more pics of the place.

Inside Our Best Buildings (1) Vanbrugh Castle

Vanbrugh Castle is one of those subjects I periodically return to from time to time - and hey - why not - it's one of the most curious, secretive buildings we have. Most of us have never seen inside the gates, let alone inside the place itself. I was enjoying a picnic on One Tree Hill last summer and saw people on the roof garden (Vanbrugh lead-lined it so he could use it himself.) I confess I was one very jealous Phantom.

So today, I'm starting a new (very, very) occasional series, where I play at being Lloyd Grossman (now that's not a phrase I ever thought I'd write...) and take Nosy Neighbours on tours around Greenwich's best private buildings.

Since I have no more access than anyone else on this one, I'll be relying on you lot to tell me all about fab places around here - so if you visit somewhere lovely (or even live in one of our best buildings???) I would LOVE to hear from you.

I make no apology for returning to Vanbrugh Castle yet again (the first visit was a couple of years ago and we've been back several times since.) Because today, courtesy of Michael who spent a pleasant afternoon there recently, I bring you a sketch of what this incredible, strange construction is like inside now (aw- c'mon - don't tell me you've never wondered...)

The place is divided into four apartments. Today it would have been carved up into about fifty rabbit-hutches with all manner of nasty plasterboard walls, where the whole thing would collapse if you stuck so much as a drawing pin into the paper-thin membrane between you and your neighbour, but Vanbrugh Castle wasn't converted in these times.

It was the late '70s when local lawyer Alistair Wilson saw the old pile up for sale for £100,000. That was a lot of money then and he couldn't afford it all by himself so he advertised for people to go in with him on the project. He got three replies, so the house was divided into four. There isn't, according to old newspaper reports, an awful lot of heavy partitioning - just a few blocked-up doors and one dividing wall.

There are two apartments in the 1716 towery-turrets, one in the middle, which is part Victorian, part Edwardian, and one detached from the main house, in the bit nearest the entrance that would almost certainly have originally been a stables or coach-house. There are extensions, but only two-storey, and (I'm told) in keeping with its Grade I listed status.

Michael tells me that there is just one of the original four owners left, living in the oldest part of the castle - but that the apartments seldom change hands - two were last sold 20 years ago; the middle one which he visited was bought 5 years ago.

It's an airy modern family home, and sounds like it has a few partitions to make it a sensible place to live. The ground floor used to be the games room when it was the RAF children's school. It's now bathrooms and bedrooms, with high ceilings and fabulous arched doorways. There's also a sympathetic extension containing a magnificent kitchen (yup, I'm drooling all over my keyboard here).

Upstairs, it used to be the boys' dormitory - but it's easy to see why the bedrooms have now been moved downstairs - the view is staggering, and the upstairs is now an enormous sitting room, looking out over Greenwich Park then London itself. Michael spotted the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye from there.

I'm finding it hard to imagine room for a two-acre garden out the back (though of course in Vanbrugh's time it would have been much bigger) - everything looks so built-up down Maze Hill way - but it just goes to show how many places in London do still have enormous grounds. Sadly Chez Phantom isn't one of them...

Part of the grounds are formal gardens but there are also lawns, a large cottage vegetable garden (the Phantom swoons...) the outline of where the old school tennis courts once were, an underground garden room and the old 1950s school gym, before you get to the path leading down to the boundary with the Westcombe Woodland (again, I can never work out exactly how the Woodland actually fits in...) Sadly it lost most of its crenellated walls long ago.

Michael didn't get to go into the really old bit with the turrets, but form the gardens he spotted the rooftop gardens and the glass viewing room on the castle roof itself. He says "With such incredible views from the first floor in the house I visited, I can only imagine how breathtaking it must be from the castle roof!" Me too, Michael, me too.

And what of the fabled tunnels? Sadly Michael didn't get to see those either, though he is assured they're "real, very low, and that they are believed to go under the woods towards the river direction with speculation that they may have been for escape, or water tunnels for the Tudor Palace once, or some other purpose." I have a horrid feeling the water tunnels are more likely than the escape routes, but I'm a romantic Phantom, so I'll run with the former anyway.

So there we have it - a little tour around Vanbrugh Castle. But there are about twenty houses I'd give my cloak and tricorn to see inside - if you've ever visited one, and can give me a description, I'd just love to hear from you. I won't give you a wish list - just hit me with any places that have inspired you...

Gay Furbishings And Quaint Conceits

"The romantic and beautiful side of history is perhaps too much forgotten today in the very proper desire to reach accuracy of detail and the security of the historical basis of things."

So writes the great Greenwich antiquarian Professor J.E.G Montmorency in his introduction to a very wonderful book written in 1925 by Gerald Baker, Blackheath - The Story of the Royal Hundred.

The professor's right, of course, and I confess that I find myself rather more in the Baker camp than the Montmorency - it's much more fun to take the wildly romantic view of things, and write sentences such as "passing over many scenes of less importance" about the boring bits of Greenwich history than to do actual original research. Of course when it comes to books I use, I'd turn to Montmorency every time - but for the look, you can't beat the spiffing 1920s visions of Gerald Baker's slim volume.

Take that lovely picture of Nelson Road at the top of this post, for example - complete with ladies in cloche hats and fur stoles. Or this leafy vision of the Paragon, which I understand wasn't all that well at the time after WWI - though of course worse was to come before it finally reached - well, much the same view as in the drawing here - a few decades ago.

But the most fabulous thing about Blackheath... has to be the very telling advertisements inside the covers - and I thought today I'd share a few with you. They range from ads for hairdressers offering "Permanent Waving - by the best processes with the most up-to-date apparatus (fourteen separate cubicles)" through to F.A. Roberts who declare "here you will always find an attractive hat or toque suitable for any occasion..."

Some were enterprising individuals:

And some local eateries:

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that Alderton's restful cafe doesn't exist any more - but the gas showroom in Nelson Road is still here - even if it's not quite what it was:

Not sure where to see a little bit of Greenwich's early 20th Century hidden history? Try Joy - in Nelson Road. In between the saucy hen-night accouterments and sparkly gee-jaws, look for the old gas taps, the two beautiful remaining fireplaces - and, best of all, the mosaic-floored, stained glass windowed changing rooms with their wonderful, faded grandeur:

It's worth trying something on just to get a closer look...

Another survivor is the old Heathview Hotel - now the Clarendon, which, this advert implies, has stones from the old London Bridge incorporated into its walls:

I'm pretty sure Chappells are still going too, though I'd hazard a guess they wouldn't use a picture quite as - creepy - as this any more:

And what of those Quaint Conceits? Just take a look at this gay blade from Royal Parade.
Don't you just yearn for a new New Argosy that sells rhyme sheets, Viennese ceramics and Russian dolls?

Misty Moisty Morning

I am no early riser. I'll just about stir myself to get to Billingsgate occasionally, and I've been known to get up early to take one of those ridiculous cheap flights that only seem to leave at horrid hours of the day. But there are some things that really are worth the effort - and if you can suffer the pain at the moment there are some incredible morning views from the Thames.

And no - I don't have a new camera - this one's borrowed. But being posh, it takes better shots than I do...

This majestic sight is actually the ballast works at Charlton. I tell you - early morning mist, with the sun doing its best to burn through it does wonders for even the dullest place. To be honest I'm rather fond of this wharf - I love the fact that it still has a working railway on the secret Angerstein line that many people don't even realise exists.

Moving on, we next see Millennium Village, in muted shades that make it look like some kind of fairy city:

I nearly didn't put the next pic in - there are so many photos of the Dome - but it is an incredible structure, I'm in a mellow, indulgent mood - and it's my blog...

Here's the defunct Syrol - not long for this world. I understand the grand explosion of the silos is scheduled for February.

The power station looks quite majestic in any light, IMHO. It probably wasn't the best place to site it, next to the delicate, ancient Trinity Hospital - but it has an industrial magnificence that earns it respect now...

If you peer very closely at the next pic, you'll see the aforesaid delicate Trinity Almshouses nestled in the shadow of its neighbour.

Coming to the end of the Greenwich part of my trip now - the foot tunnel, just as the sun is just about to peep through:

And finally - the most splendid, regal sight in Greenwich - The Old Royal Naval College at Too-Bloomin' Early o'clock in the morning...

Inspired? Thames Clippers website is here. It doesn't mention (that I can find) anything about the promised acceptance of Pay As You Go Oyster cards from November that there had all the fuss and publicity about a few months ago, but when I emailed them to find out what was happening I was assured it will happen later this month. They've promised to let me know when Oystercards will be accepted - I'll keep you posted.

WWII 'Arrow Slits'

Just before my camera decided to die on me, I was taking a lovely Autumn walk up by Ranger's House and around the perimeter of the park - I add this picture just as a reminder that it wasn't that long ago that we saw the sun...

As I rounded the South West corner of the park, up near the Tea Hut and the nice old K2 phone box, I saw this in the wall:

Judging from the angle of the holes, I'd put money on it dating back to one of the World Wars - presumably gaps created for rifles to poke through and set their sights on invaders over Blackheath. The cement dressing makes me think they're unlikely to date back much further and be some kind of musket-slit (unless repointed...)

It hadn't occurred to me that it would have been considered a likely Nazi landing spot - after all the heath wasn't quite the smooth billiard table it is now - it had hollows and dips all over the place. But I guess it was a wild area near London - and any walled area was a safe haven to be defended.

According to Neil Rhind the First World War wasn't nearly as devastating as the Second. Zeppelin raids targeting other things claimed one or two direct hits, and it saw the end of golf on the heath (some might argue no big sadness there...) but the worst damage was afterwards, when the detritus of war wasn't cleared up for years and lack of money sent Blackheath into decline.

I'm guessing that the rifle-slits I saw the other day date back to 1939, when Greenwich (and the rest of the country, natch) was a hive of preparation for the Second World War - seeing practice drills by the emergency services, searchlight batteries erected, barrage balloons inflated and trenches dug (which apparently were a bit of a hazard - people kept falling into them during the blackouts...) Neil Rhind says that one gravel pit was used as a home for a special barrage balloon that could be floated into the sky at short notice.

At least 12 V1 and V2 rockets fell on the heath, but I'm not aware of any Nazi parachutists so presumably the elaborate preparations did the trick although I'm sure a bunch of poor sods from the Home Guard spent many a night with their guns stuck through the holes waiting for invaders.

I have a wonderful image of them in my head - the Corporal Jones character, alert and ready to panic at any second. Fraser predicting doom and gloom. Pike wearing three extra scarves his mum's made him and Godfrey just wanting a pee. Private Walker, of course, has snuck off round the corner to the Tea Hut for a roll up and to sell some black market stockings to the girl in orange lippy serving his cuppa.

I'm curious - does anyone know of any other quiet reminders round here of the war that have somehow escaped being cleared away? The odd pillbox? Air raid shelter sign? Anderson Hut in someone's back garden, used as a shed ever since?

Quiet Shame

Back in September, during Open House weekend, I went to visit the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich - a curious building with a curious history. But I'm not talking about that today, I'm more concerned with something I learned that morning which has been troubling me ever since.

Our group was shown round the barracks by the man in charge - always good to get the head honcho - and I took the opportunity to ask about the fate of the Rotunda.

For those of you who aren't aware of this very, very odd building, tucked away behind a screen of trees and a fence of barbed wire (the photos here are the best I could do back in the summer - there's just no way of really seeing it any more...), it's a weird tent-like structure, which started out as exactly that - a tent.

John Nash built it in 1814, in the grounds around Carlton House Gardens. It was the centrepiece of six tents created to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon (so what if it was all a bit previous...)

Everyone liked the tent so much that Nash decided that it was too good just to take down again, so he hit upon the idea of surrounding the tent walls with brick, and covering the canvas roof with a rather splendid, sweeping lead version to protect the original. I guess the equivalent would be if someone put a giant metal dome over the top of the O2.

The whole thing was moved to Woolwich in 1820, to become the Museum of Artillery - which it was for about 180 years. It even got a revamp in 1975.

When the Woolwich Arsenal was turned into what it is now, it was decided to create Firepower, and all the stuff was moved from the Rotunda to the new museum. They're still moving the last cannons, I understand. Here's one:

What one makes of Firepower is an individual matter. But the question of what happens to the Rotunda next is one that I'd never fully got to the bottom of.

It's completely closed, with high fences and the aforementioned trees, though it would have once had fantastic views - for miles around. I knew that the place had reverted to the MOD so I took the opportunity of asking our guide what would be happening.

Frankly, after he told me (he was completely, and typically militarily up-front about it) the rest of the weekend was a bit of a downer for me and I've been trying to get my head around it ever since.

When the final cannons go (and they may have gone by now, though I doubt it - they're big buggers) the place will 'have the lights turned off.' That, to you and me, means it will just be left, to moulder away. No access, no views, just a quiet rotting into the earth.

It's economics, of course, that dictate this. The guy told me it takes sixty-odd grand a year just to stop the place collapsing (it faces special architectural problems due to its 'unusual' construction) and he has other drains on his finances - not least huge amounts of military memorabilia that finds its way into his hands which he's supposed to lovingly curate.

I expressed my distress at this news, trying hard to lower my voice from the strangulated squeak it had become. He said that he would be interested in talking to anyone that could make a financial go of leasing it - after all - it's a liability - sixty grand a year before you do anything to it (and I'm not sure if they're even going to spend that when they finally go...)

I would SO love to see something happen to this - but what - and with what kind of cash? The place is listed (of course) but there's no real stick to beat the MOD with if they just let it moulder. It's out of the way - I can't even see what it could be used for - but hell - this is a John Nash building that is at the very least 'exotic.' Surely there's something...

The Candlelit Crypt

In the days leading to All Hallows Eve, I'm beginning a week of posts about pagan/occult/ghostly and otherwise-spiritual Greenwich. We're out starting gentle today, with some atmosphere, courtesy of John - but expect some very odd stuff indeed...

I could have sworn I had a photo somewhere of the entrance to St Alfege's crypt - wonderful looking doors that you can peer through and get some sort of idea about what lies below, but heaven only knows where it is on my computer, and still no chance of me taking any more for the moment.

The guys at St Alfeges opened up the crypt on the same weekend as Open House, but I confess I didn't know about it, so I've never been down there myself. John, however, took the initiative to contact the warden, who agreed to take him and his brother on a special visit. Ask - and ye shall receive...

John was particularly keen to see the tomb of General Wolfe, which, given the glory in which our other great military/naval hero, Lord Nelson, is interred, is rather modest.

John forgot to bring a torch, so he had what must have been a much more thrilling experience - a tour by candlelight.

I can't work out how old the crypt is - I suspect it doesn't predate the current Hawksmoor building as it would have been a nightmare to build a new construction of a different shape and size to the original on old foundations - but Hawksmoor was a clever chap, and it's possible he would have had instructions not to disturb the vaults, which included that of Thomas Tallis.

John didn't mention that he saw either Tallis's tomb or Greenwich's favourite bad-girl-made-good, Lavinia Fenton, but it's possible they're down there too - I'm sure someone here can tell me if they're still there.

I also don't know how much the crypt was damaged in the war - it's not specifically mentioned in the austerity pamphlet I have that was printed just after the war, which talks about the destruction.

I've just realised I don't know much about this at all. Sorry, folks - but it does leave it all wide open for you lot to enlighten me. And if anyone has any nice pics of the entrance to the vaults...

Faded Greenwich (8)

Charlie discovered this intriguing example of faded Charlton up by the station (which is on the right of this picture.) What's curious about it is that although at first glance it appears to be just a sign for Barclays Bank, on closer inspection there seems to be at least one other sign either underneath or in addition to the main image.

Which got painted over first - and why didn't the earlier one get completely removed to make the later one stand out better? It looks as though the Barclays one is the more recent - but surely they could have afforded an extra pot of paint or a scrubbing brush to get rid of the earlier one?

Whatever, it's a fascinating thing for us now. All I can read of the image below is Lon - London, probably. I have no idea what the rest would have been. Any ideas?

Of course, below both of them is a more recent example of Faded London. I was reading a fascinating theory by Iain Sinclair recently about grafitti - that it has evolved in the way that some might argue art has. That the old wall-length murals that we used to see in the 80s and early 90s was the 'rococo' period of the movement, which gradually evolved to the more modern, minimal single-tags we are more likely to see today. Sinclair writes a goodly chapter about it in, if memory serves Lights Out For the Territory, and I would guess that by that theory, this work must be circa Cubism or late Impressionist...or something...

Royal Hill Lovelies (1)

Old China has flagged up something I've wondered about myself for some time - some really rather curious windows in one of the houses along Royal Hill.

The ground floor of Number 80, Royal Hill, next door but one to Royal Teas, looks pretty normal, really. It has a pair of tiny square-shaped bay windows, which may or may not be original - it's such an odd little house I'll believe they are - but from there on up it starts to look incongruous.

A pair of fanciful windows, set into a large amount of baby-pink painted frontage. It's something that really needs to be seen in the context of the street to 'get' how quaintly peculiar this looks, but the pic gives you something to look out for. It's the windows of a palace on a terribly sweet little terraced cottage.

The windows look splendidly Regency - they wouldn't look out of place in the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. But these are in the middle of a side street in Greenwich. It's almost as though the builder (who may or may not have been the road's overall developer Robert Royal - the street's named for him, rather than for any connection with the Crown; I guess residents are thanking their lucky stars he wasn't called Boggs...) had a set of fancy windows left over from another job, thought "they'll do," despite the fact that they didn't really go with the rest of the street's style and popped 'em in anyway. "Bish-bosh. Tidy job..."

But that's what makes a Royal Hill Lovely. It's not a single style of regimented houses - though of course there are one or two 'rows' of matching buildings - but a lovely mish-mash of flavours, each of which has its own charm and adds to the whole. There's not another house in Greenwich that looks like Number 80 - and it's all the cuter for it.

According to Darryl Spurgeon - his Discover Greenwich and Charlton is out of print, but turns up on a relatively frequent basis and is a fine (if mildly confusingly formatted) overview of Greenwich history - the terrace was built in 1831 as part of the Hyde Vale Estate, but I know nothing more than that. If anyone's a client of the Osteopath who's currently occupying Number 80, I'd love to know some more about it.

More lovely houses to come...

Faded Greenwich (6)

Prince of Orange Lane, SE10

Benedict may have left us in body, but in spirit he still haunts Greenwich almost as much as I do. He told me a few days ago about this very hidden piece of faded Greenwich, which he'd always meant to photograph but never got around to doing before moving to forn parts.

Prince of Orange Lane is a very strange little truncated street just round the back of Bellucci's pub - which, of course, used to be the Prince of Orange before dodgy 1980s-style pub names became all the rage, even though it only got its current moniker a couple of years ago. (I've already forgotten its tedious 1990s/early 2000s incarnation...)

The lane would be cut off by the railway anyway, but the wooden site-gates at the end imply some sort of development being shoehorned into the two centimetres of land left between road and rail.

To be honest the lane itself isn't very exciting - much has been altered - and when I got there to take the pic, I thought Benedict's sign must have gone the way of all paint - until I turned around to go back - and looked up.

I'm assuming that this sign was intended to be read by train travellers - there can't have been enough footfall round the back of a grubby old lane to make it worthwhile for locals.

For once, the wording doesn't take much working out - "Justice's Bread, Cakes and Pastries." The mystery is why they painted it where the window in the middle would cut through. The obvious suggestion is that the window was added later - though it is cut very neatly around the lettering. Another possiblity is that the window had a shutter, now lost, that carried the rest of the message.

When I searched for "Justice's Bread" I was two results short of a googlewhack - I got just three answers - which in itself is pretty rare these days. Sadly none of the three had anything to do with our Justice's Bread. I tried "Justice's Bread," Greenwich, and got nothing at all. Sadly, if anyone geeky enough as I am was type that phrase in now, they still wouldn't get that elusive GW with my one result, because it's a three-word search.

Blimey. I can't believe I just typed that last paragraph. Note to self: Get a life, you sad Phantom.

The downside of almost getting the aforesaid GW means that I have no information whatsoever about Justice's Bread, even after resorting to several likely books - but, just to reassure Benedict - the sign's still there, mate. Thanks...

Faded Greenwich (5)

Siebert Road, SE3

BoneyBoy and Paul have kindly saved me the slog up Westcombe Hill to capture this piece of Faded Greenwich - being the laziest Phantom in the world I wasn't much looking forward to it, despite its being one of the best examples of old painted advertising I know of round here.

Shame about the satellite dish - surely it could have been placed a few centimetres higher. Makes it hard to work out the first part of the mural. I spent quite some time trying to figure out the lettering; this is the best I can do:

Holmes
Plumber & Decorator
Alterations & Repairs
Sanitary Goods of Every Description
Estimates Reg(?)

(Blank) Green 087

Maybe sharper eyes than mine can work out the details...

As usual I know nothing about Mr Holmes and his plumbing and decorating business - any clues will be gratefully received, as will other examples of faded and fading Greenwich.