Greenwich has played a key role in the story of Britain 's sea power for over 400 years and today its museums celebrate its maritime history. These attributes, combined with close links to England 's Tudor and Stuart sovereigns, give Greenwich an unrivalled symbolic identity.
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The history of the town is closely linked to that of the Thames, the Park and the Royal Hospital for seamen – the original use of the Old Royal Naval College from 1705 to 1869. Filled with Naval pensioners and river workers, it was always “maritime” and a place of popular resort for Londoners.
Historically, anyone attacking London from Europe via Dover was forced either over Blackheath by land or past Greenwich by river. Defence, celebration or service of the city and its river, have always been key to the prosperity of the borough. There was a time when the Thames was crowded with shipping and cargo from all over the world, making the riverbanks temporarily the most prosperous on earth.
Occasionally the mud of the area throws up some shard of London 's hidden past. Roman relics dug up in Greenwich in 1902 are thought to have come from an isolated temple stranded on the way to Londinium proper, which the Romans had established upriver by AD43.
The next invaders were the Saxons in the 6 th century. The first real proof of their settlement in Greenwich comes in the 10 th century, when it is recorded that the Saxon King Edgar gave part of his property in the area to the Abbey of Ghent. The hugely complicated saga of the ownership and development of this ancient property, which is partly defined today by the royal park, meanders through the story of Greenwich much as the river on which it stands bends and curves.
After the Saxons came the Danes. In 1011, the Danes kidnapped Archbishop Alfege from Canterbury . But when their ransom bid went wrong, they murdered him – where Hawksmoor's Church of St Alfege now stands in the centre of Greenwich .
By 1433, the land was in Crown hands again and the austere abbey on the site of the present Royal Naval College had become the worldly Bella Court , home of Henry V's brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. The Duke also built a fortress on the hill, where the Royal Observatory now stands, in his newly enclosed park.
After the Duke died in 1447, Bella Court was given to his nephew Henry VI's wife, Margaret of Anjou. In spite of the changes she made to it (which included renaming the house Placentia), the place seems to have all but vanished by 1500, the year that Henry VII bought 600,000 bricks and created the spectacular Greenwich Palace, an enormous castellated residence that dominated the river for 160 years.
By the 16 th century, much naval shipbuilding was taking place along the banks of the Thames , with royal dockyards at Depford and downriver at Woolwich. In 1514, Henry VIII launched his flagship, the Henri Grace à Dieu , at Woolwich. She was the largest ship in the largest navy England had ever seen. The powerful naval presence meant that no foreign vessel, Danish or otherwise, would ever attack London again. This stretch of the Thames continued to produce most of Britain 's warships until 1869.
The days of England 's naval supremacy had their ceremonial peak in 1806 with the funeral of her most famous admiral, Lord Nelson, after his defeat of the French at Trafalgar. On Christmas day 1805 his body was carried ashore at Greenwich Hospital – now the Royal Naval College – in the readiness for the three-day lying-in-state in the Painted Hall on 5 January.
The last Thames-built Royal Navy ship, HMS Thunderer, was launched across the river from Greenwich at Bow Creek in 1912.
After eminent royal and maritime beginnings, an uncharacteristically sleepy recent history is over. Greenwich has now begun to balance its splendour and heritage with social planning and daring developments.
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