On Saturday 29th June members of the Cambridge Society of London explored historic maritime Greenwich, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on a tour led by Blue Badge Guide Caroline Piper.
Greenwich is intimately connected with the navy and the sea so we started our tour at the Cutty Sark, the last surviving extreme clipper in the world, a fast commercial sailing ship that worked as a tea clipper to China and India and a wool clipper to Australia. The name and the scantily-clad female figurehead come from the poem Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burns. This describes a farmer called Tam who is chased by a scantily-clad witch called Nannie, who is in love with him, and who is dressed only in a “cutty sark” – an archaic Scottish name for a short nightdress.
We strolled along the riverside and wandered through the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College, built as the Old Royal Naval Hospital, a retirement home for elderly and disabled seamen by King William and Queen Mary. We admired Christopher Wren’s simple symmetrical architecture and visited the chapel where students at the University of Greenwich, which occupies most of the site today, get to graduate.
We explored the Queen’s House, built as a “house of delights” for the queens of England between 1616 and 1638 by Inigo Jones, an architectural trailblazer. The photos show the symmetrical classical front of the building, the famous tulip staircase and the beautiful geometric black and white marble floor of the great hall. The tulip staircase was the first geometric self-supporting spiral staircase in Britain, and standing at the bottom and gazing upwards makes for a dizzying view. It was probably named for the tulip fever gripping the Netherlands and Europe at the time, and a tulip design forms the blue balustrade of the staircase. Today the Queen’s House contains a fabulous collection of paintings of Tudor and Stuart royals and people and places associated with the navy. The photo shows the infamous lovers, Admiral Horatio Nelson (national hero of the battle of Trafalgar) and his mistress Lady Emma Hamilton, together with a bust of their illegitimate daughter Horatia. Nelson and Emma’s love letters were published in 1814 causing a huge scandal. Despite Nelson’s dying wish being that the nation should take care of Emma and Horatia, Emma died in penury.
As the day was scorching hot we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and admired Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory from the bottom of the park’s steep hill, rather than attempt the climb! The Royal Observatory is home of the Prime Meridian, 0 longitude, so the group crossed between the eastern and western hemispheres (and travelled in time) during the course of the tour!
Organised by Caroline Piper