England trip, Aug 2008 - Greenwich

My brother was in town for the last few days and yesterday, he said he wanted to go to Greenwich. Although Greenwich is pretty close to where I live, I have never been to the Greenwich park. The weather was nice so I thought it is a perfect day for an excursion.

We arrived in Greenwich market to get a small lunch. Then we moved onto the Old Royal Naval College. The baroque buildings were designed by Christopher Wren (the guy who also built St Paul's Cathedral) 300 year ago as the Greenwich hospital. The Hospital became a naval college in 1873. After the Naval college moved out in 1998, the University of Greenwich and the Trinity College of Music moved into the vacated buildings.

The buildings are quite impressive

The Painted Hall (right) and Chapel (left) from the outside

The Painted Hall was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1694. It was finished in 1704 and Sir James Thornhill was commissioned to decorate the Hall. The work took nineteen years to complete. The Hall was originally built to serve as the dining hall of Greenwich Hospital. But by the time he is finished, it was deemed to be both too grand and too much of a tourist attraction for the pensioners to eat it in.

The Chapel on the other end is finely decorated. It is supposed to have excellent acoustics and during term time, the Choir from the Trinity College of Music would perform here regularly.

The National Maritime museum is located on the other side of the road. The Museum has some of the most important holdings in the world on the history of Britain at sea. It contains items such as map, manuscripts, maritime art, scientific and navigational instruments. It is quite an interesting museum

There is a big dial which shows the distance and direction from UK ports to a number of world cities. I was 19,985km from Hong Kong and 22,171 km from Sydney.

The Queen's House is located on the same site. It is a smallish 'garden house' constructed for Anne of Denmark, the queen of King James I of England. But in the end, it was her successor, Queen Henrietta, who moved in.

The Tulip Stairs in the Queen's House are quite famous. It is also the first centrally unsupported spiral stairs constructed in England.

Then we headed off to the Royal Observatory on the top of the hill. The clock above is an early example of an electric clock, was a slave mechanism controlled by electric pulses transmitted by a master clock inside the main building. The 'network' of master and slave clocks was constructed and installed by Charles Shepherd in 1852.

The spot offers a great view of Greenwich

It is also the home of the world's Prime Meridian - Longitude 0" - and of Greenwich Mean Time.

Photo in front of the sculpture representing Longitude. You can't see it in the photo but there is actually a long queue behind!!

It was a warm day so the ice cream cart is doing good business!