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The demolition of Greenwich Castle

Often known as Duke Humphrey’s Tower and sometimes as Millefleur, Greenwich Castle was erected in the 1430s by the brother of King Henry V,  Duke Humphrey (1390–1447), who also built a manor house by the river at around the same time. This was demolished about 1500 and the much larger Greenwich Palace erected in its place.

Although the Castle appears in the distance in several seventeenth century views, there are no known images that show the Castle in any detail. Nor are there any known contemporary plans. One of the clearest images comes from Hollar's 1637 long view of Greenwich (above and below).

Remodeled in the 1520s, improved in the 1610s and most probably demolished at some point in the 1660s or early 1670s, the exact date of the Castle's demolition is unclear. What is certain, is that the Royal Observatory, whose construction began in 1675, was built on the site on which it had stood. The aim of this page it to take a look at sources that help shed light on the matter.

 

The journal of William Schellinks

Between 1661and1665 Jakob Thierry de Jong undertook a grand tour of Europe accompanied by the Dutch artist William (Willem) Schellinks (1627–1678) as his guide. Throughout their travels, Schellinks kept a journal. Those parts related to their visit to England were later translated into English and published in 1993.

On 14 August 1661, Schellinks recorded the following about his journey up the Thames:

'We came to famous Greenwich on our left, very pleasantly situated on the river. The royal palace stands close to the water along the river, a very large, long building first begun by          . It was damaged during the recent troubles and is at present in a badly ruined state; it was used by Oliver Cromwell as a prison during the war against the Dutch, of whom many died there of privation and disease [The first Anglo-Dutch War took place from 1652-1654]. A little inland is the Queen's House or palace, a fine, stately building with many large and small rooms and nice stone spiral stairs with iron banisters [the famous Tulip Stairs] leading up to the upper rooms to the flat roof, which is lead-covered and railed in, from where one has beautiful views all around. This building too has suffered some damage in the recent war and is at present without furniture and pictures, but is now on the King's orders being repaired. There is a fairly large deerpark, surmounted by a wall, but the soldiers have killed all the game, which used to be here in large numbers. On a hill in this park are the ruins of a castle which has been raised to the ground by the parliamentarians’.

On a later visit to Greenwich on 25 October 1662 Schellinks recorded:

'At 10 o'clock in the morning we rode with Mr. Adrien Boddens, Mr. J. Seghvelt, and Mr. Samuel Hill to Greenwich, and looked at the King's House, now in somewhat better order than when we saw it anno 1661 on 7th September. On the hill in the park behind the house two avenues of trees had been planted from the bottom to the top, and near the top of the hill, where it was too steep to climb up, steps had been cut in the ground to walk up in comfort.

On the river side all the old buildings of the palace are pulled down to the ground, to make, to begin with' a large level area; His Majesty, who takes great pleasure in the place because of its beautiful situation by the river, and the understandingly pleasant view from the hill over the park, is planning to have a magnificent palace built there,'

Click here to read more about the Giant Steps which were constructed at some point between 1 September 1661 and 10 June 1662.

 

Pepy's diary

Pepys recorded the following in his diary on 11 April 1662:

‘At Woolwich, up and down to do the same business; and so back to Greenwich by water, and there while something is dressing for our dinner, Sir William [Penn] and I walked into the Park, where the King hath planted trees and made steps in the hill up to the Castle, which is very magnificent.’

 

Engraving from Walter Scott's Waverly Novels

Beneath the engraving are the words 'From a Picture temp of tale', which is assumed to mean from a picture that was contemporary with the novel (which was historical). The original artist is unknown as is the picture's current whereabouts. Nor is it known if the picture was a genuine contemporary image or a later artist's impression. The buildings of the Palace and St Alphege's Church in the background suggest the former.

Click here to read the novel and view a list of the illustrations which includes both the artists and the engravers names.

 

Jonas Moore's manuscript map of 1662

Appointed Surveyor General of the Ordnance  in 28 July 1669, Jonas Moore not only became Flamsteed's patron, but was also influential in getting the Observatory built and in securing the post of Astronomer Royal for him. First appointed as Assistant Surveyor at the Ordnance in 1665, Moore's first commission from a government body came several years earlier in 1662. It was to produce a map of the Thames. He chose to entitle it as follows: 

"A MAPP OR description of the River of Thames from Westminster to the Sea with the falls of all the Rivers into it the severall Creekes Soundings & Depths thereof and Docks made for the use of his Ma^ties Navy, made by Jonas Moore Gent: by Warrant from Sr Charles Harbord Kn^t, his said Ma^ties Surveyor General. In Pursuance of his Ma^ties Warrant and Command under his Royal Signature Anno Domini 1662"

The royal warrant to which Moore referred  is dated 7 February 1662.

The plan (now preserved at The National Archives (Work38/331)) is large being more than six feet wide, two foot high and edged by a gold border with a black outline. Drawn on three pieces of joined velum, the map has become rather rubbed over time, possibly in part, because of people brushing past it when it was pinned to an office wall. As well as showing buildings, the map has a coat of arms (top centre), a cartouche containing the title above (bottom right) balanced by an image of a pair of dividers on a ruler (bottom left). There are also five good size watercolours? edged in gold. They are titled: The prospect of London (top left) and then in a row along the bottom from left to right: Greenwich, Wulwich (Woolwich), Erith and Graves End (Gravesend). They have been attributed by some to Wenceslaus Hollar, possibly on account of similarities between The prospect of London and known Hollar views. That said, no Hollar views remotely similar to the other four watercolours have been identified.

As far as is known, the complete map has never been reproduced. However, the western third was reproduced in monochrome by the London Topographical Society in 1912 (below) and the western half in full colour as the endpapers in Philippa Glanville's London in Maps (1972). A cropped version of The London Topographical Society publication was included by Peter Whitfield in his book London in maps (2006/2017). Interestingly, the original seems to have suffered further damage since the 1912 copy was made.

The map includes not one, but two images of Greenwich Castle - one on the map itself and the other in the view of Greenwich. But how reliable are they as a guide to the state of the Castle in 1662? The three detailed map sections below help answer this question.

Taken together, it would seem that whilst some parts of the map were completely up to date, others were rather dated. As such, the Castle's appearance cannot be relied upon as representing its true state in 1662.

 

John Webb's proposed 'Grot and Ascent'

In around 1665, John  Webb, who was responsible for rebuilding the Palace proposed the construction of a 'Grot and Ascent' to close the view at the top of the Giant Steps. Although it was never constructed, it would have required the Castle to be removed so as not to distract from the scene. For more on the Grot and Ascent see John Bold's Greenwich (2000).

 

The Royal Warrant ordering the Observatory's building

The Royal Warrant ordering the construction of the Observatory is dated 22 June 1675 and begins:

'Whereas, in order to the finding out of the longitude of places for perfecting navigation and astronomy, we have resolved to build a small observatory within our park at Greenwich, upon the highest ground, at or near the place where the castle stood, with lodging-rooms for our astronomical observator and assistant, ...' (click here to read more)

This implies that the Castle site had been cleared prior to the decision being made to site the Observatory at Greenwich.

 

So when was the castle demolished?

One thing that we can be sure of is that the Castle had been demolished prior to any decision being made in 1675 to build the Observatory at Greenwich. Although John Evelyn (1620–1706) mentions the Palace and the Queen's house in his diary, he makes no mention of the Castle. Schellinks on the other hand records that in 1661 the castle was a ruin and had 'been raised to the ground by the parliamentarians’. However, no other account has been found that corroborates this.

The obvious interpretation of Pepys's 1662 diary entry: 'I walked into the Park, where the King hath planted trees and made steps in the hill up to the Castle’, is that the Castle was intact. However, at the present time, we refer to both intact castles and castle ruins as castles (very little remains of Hastings Castle for example). Pepys may therefore have been referring to ruins.

The most likely scenario seems to be that the Castle was in a ruinous state in 1660 when Charles II was restored to the throne and that it was demolished at some point between 1662 and 1675. Given that landscaping works in the Park commenced in 1661 and more or less come to an end by 1665 (money was in short supply), it might be argued that the Castle was more likely to have been demolished before rather than after 1665.

 

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Surviving parts of the Castle

In his letter to Towneley dated 22 January 1675/6, Flamsteed included a description of the Observatory together with a hand drawn floor plan that showed the ground and first floor of Flamsteed House, but not the basement floor, together with the relative location and floor plan of the Quadrant and Sextant House, writing:

'It were much to be wished our walls [of Flamsteed House] might have been Meridionall [aligned north/south] but for saveing of Charges it was thought fit to build upon the old ones which are some 13^o½ false and wide of the true meridian as you will find by the wall of the Watch House [Quadrant House]' (RS/MS243/12)

The earliest plan of the Observatory that shows the basement of Flamsteed House and the walls of the Castle to which Flamsteed referred is Airy's plan of 1846 (ADM140/426). What it clearly shows is that the walls of the basement level are considerably thicker than the majority of those of the ground and first floor above.

In Flamsteed's time, both the basement and first floor of Flamsteed House were roughly square in shape, with each floor being divided into four square spaces of roughly equal size. The east west dividing wall was a similar thickness at basement level to the external walls, whilst and the north south dividing wall was thinner. The north-east quadrant is shown as a pair of linked cellars running in an east-west direction which were entered from the west. Although both cellars had vaulted ceilings, none of the other rooms in the basement are thought to have had them. In 1846, the other three spaces were used as follows: Larder (north-west quadrant), Back kitchen (south-west quadrant) and a bath room (south-east quadrant).

In 1924, the inner (eastern) of the two cellars was used to house the master pendulum of the Observatory's new sidereal standard clock, Shortt 3, which was bolted onto the east wall. In 1926, it was joined by the master pendulum of Shortt 11 which was mounted on the south wall. The bolts which held it in place passed all the way through the wall. which was recorded at the time as being 3 feet 7 inches (1.09m) thick. In 1933/4 the adjoining cellar was converted to house more Shortt Clocks. This involved rendering the walls and ceiling and installing a new concrete floor. Click here to read more about the Shortt Clocks at Greenwich.

 

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Surviving underground structures that may be associated with the Castle

As well as the walls in the basement of Flamsteed House (none of which are on public view), other elements of Greenwich Castle are thought to survive below the ground elsewhere on the site, though none of the can be dated with any certainty. They are:

1. The well where Flamsteed constructed his Well Telescope.

Flamsteed’s Well Telescope was the first and least successful of the Greenwich Zenith Telescopes. It was also one of the most novel as it was constructed in a dry well. An extremely rare etching by Francis Place after Robert Thacker c.1677, of which a late Victorian copy (of regrettably poor quality) is reproduced to the right, shows a lined shaft, cutting through about 75 feet of upper strata before continuing unlined 25 feet into the chalk below where its diameter widens. The date of the well’s creation is unknown. It lay outside the domain of the original Observatory, roughly 25 metres to the east of where Flamsteed was to subsequently mount his Mural Arc. No evidence has ever been unearthed that it was dug for Flamsteed, leading to the supposition that it was either a remnant from Greenwich Castle or perhaps a naturally occurring denehole comparable to other natural shafts in the Blackheath vicinity. The underlying geology is a mix of sand and pebbles overlying chalk. The shaft was probably filled in during Flamsteed’s time and the brick/stone cupola demolished, its location becoming rapidly forgotten.

During preparatory work for opening the Meridian Building as part of the National Maritime Museum in the 1960s, a concerted effort was made to locate the well’s position. Evidence of a shaft was found in the location indicated on Flamsteed’s manuscript plan (RGO1/18/3). Excavated to a depth of about 12 feet by Messrs Carmichael (who are presumed to have been the Ministry of Works contractors), Lewisham Natural History Society were then called in to excavate it further. Their excavations ceased at a depth of 24 feet on grounds of safety. No real evidence of a brick lining had been found, and further shuttering would have been required to go deeper. It's approximate position is now marked in the garden to the rear of the building.

2. An arched-over 'cellar' immediately to the north of Flamsteed's Sextant House

In the mid 1960s when the Meridian Building was being converted for museum use, what was described as 'an arched-over cellar' was discovered just to the north of Flamsteed's Sextant House. Although the brick arch was photographed for the museum records (Neg. Nos. A8027-B4 & A8550E), no description of the space has been located. However, it is worth mentioning that the arched over structure looks more like the outside of a well lining. It is not known if the 'cellar' was subsequently filled in or if it will be investigated when the Sextant House is demolished as part of  the Museum's 'First Light' project.

3. A culvert and a water cistern of unknown date under the lawn to the rear of Flamsteed House

At present, the date when these two features were constructed can only be speculated upon. When in 1955, detailed plans started to be drawn up to convert Flamsteed House for Museum use, it became apparent that there was nowhere to place a central boiler … except perhaps in the Garden House, which had the added convenience of being connected to Flamsteed House by a culvert that would be ideal for carrying the pipes (WORK17/374). Why and when this culvert was constructed is a complete conundrum as its location is not shown on any known Observatory plan, although a short section leading northwards from the Garden House is shown on Airy's plan No. 1 of 1846. Modern measurements suggest that it is about 4m below the level of the garden. It is not known if it connects with the passageway under the garden that runs southwards from the void area to the rear of Flamsteed House which is now full of cables which are hidden behind a doorway. There is no mention of the culvert it in the Reports of the Astronomer Royal which cover the period from 1835 onwards. One suggestion is that it was an escape route into the Park from the Castle. Another is that it provided a short cut to the garden house and later stables.

The 1831 plan (RGO6/45) shows that by this date, the Observatory had been connected to the water main. Prior to its connection, the inhabits of the Observatory and the Castle had to rely on other sources for their water. It doesn't seem to have come from a well – the well of the Well Telescope was dry and no other well on the site from the seventeenth century of earlier has been recorded on the site. Additionally, when a well, said to be 120 feet deep, was dug in 1815 in the newly enclosed lower garden, the water was found to be bad. We do know however that the Keeper's Cottage which was located within the Park to the east of the Observatory had a functioning well. It is also worth noting that on the Traver's Plan of 1695-97), whilst conduits for the supply of water to Greenwich Palace are shown within the Park on the slopes of One Tree Hill (previously known as Five Tree Hill) and Crooms Hill (formerly known as Crum Hill), none are shown on Flamsteed Hill (previously known as Snow Hill and Castle Hill).

It would seem therefore that the inhabitants of the Castle and the early Observatory had to rely on water collected and stored on site, possibly supplemented by other supplies carried in from outside. We know that prior to 1790 (when the Board of Ordnance supplied two lead cisterns)  there was at least one underground cistern at the Observatory. The earliest known plan to show it is a sectional plan by John Evelegh which dates from about 1760. It is possible that the cistern was constructed in about 1750 when Flamsteed House was extended for James Bradley. On the other hand, it could be considerably earlier. It appears on several Observatory plans including that of 1831 and Airy's plans from 1846 (ADM140/426). Built from brick, it was 'rediscovered' during landscaping works in 2009. The opening at the top is now covered with a modern metal inspection cover.

 

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Acknowledgements

The images from the British Museum are reproduced under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license, courtesy of the The Trustees of the British Museum. All have been further compressed for this website.

Museum Number: 1856,0607.5 (detail)

Museum Number: 1850,0223.254

The 1912 copy of Moore's map of 1662 is reproduced at reduced size from the digitized copy on the Yale University Library website (Call Number: 32 L84 1662/1912)

The second photograph of the Clock Cellar is © BT Heritage. It has been obtained from The BT Digital Archives and is reproduced under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) licence. It is more compressed than the original.