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Graffiti at Greenwich

 

Page under construction

 

Despite the fact that parts of the Observatory are over 350 years old, there is little graffiti to be found upon its walls. In the 1950s and 60s when the buildings were adapted for museum purposes, some internal and external walls were removed, other external walls rebuilt in new materials and most of the internal surfaces re-plastered. What if any graffiti was lost at that time is unknown as the museum authorities (in common with the custodians of most historic sites) had little or no interest in documenting its graffiti. Even as late as 2025, no formal survey had been carried out, despite the fact that highly significant changes were about to be made to the buildings as part of the Museum's 'First Light' project. Almost all the graffiti that survives consists or names or initials carved into the brickwork. It is often easiest to make out when seen in raking light.

When it was a working observatory access to the site was strictly controlled and the public rarely admitted. Generally speaking, just four groups of people had access:

1. The Astronomers Royal and their families who all lived on site
2. Employees of the Observatory
3. Contractors carrying out maintenance or building work
4. Official Visitors (whose visit would have been pre-arranged)

According to John Bold, the pensioners from Greenwich Hospital and their relatives, together with a small number of locals were granted access to the Park in 1705 with the general public also being admitted from around the same date during holidays. These included the Greenwich Fairs which took place over several days at Easter and Whitsun. It was not until the 1820s or 30s that the public were given full access. Today, the Park and Observatory are visited by many thousands of visitors each year. Sadly, a handful have had little respect for the historic site and have added graffiti of their own.

Most of the buildings consist of either red bricks or London stocks which are yellowish in colour, the former being much softer than the latter. It is in the red brickwork that most of the graffiti can be found. Some of the red bricks contain a hard grit and small pebbles which has made much of the carving uneven. According to Flamsteed, the bricks used in the original seventeenth century buildings came from ‘spare stock’ at Tilbury Fort.

The main locations where Historic graffiti has been identified are on:

1. The east wall of Flamsteed's Sextant House (which was later incorporated into the building housing Airy's Altazimuth Telescope)
2. The south wall of the south wing of the South Building (formerly known as the New Physical Building and more recently as the Astronomy Centre
3. The east, north and west walls of the Western Summerhouse
4. The east, north and west walls of the Eastern Summerhouse
5. The north facing wall of Flamsteed House

When first built, the Observatory was bounded by a wall except on the southern boundary where there was a fence. To start with, whenever the site was extended, the boundary wall was extended too, the last new section being built in 1813 when the Meridian Building was extended. Since that time all further extensions to the site were bounded by a fence rather than a wall and that remained the case until around 2006 when a small section of wall was built near the entrance to the South Building. Some of the boundary walls have since been demolished or rebuilt. When examined in 2026, the graffiti was found to be confined to just a small number of places on the Park side of the walls.

Much (but by no means all) of the historic graffiti within the boundary wall was carved in concealed corners and largely out of sight of prying eyes!

 

The children of the Astronomers Royal

Little is known about the lives of the children for whom the Observatory was home. For this reason, some of the graffiti is of particular interest as it was put there by the sons of two of the Astronomers Royal: George Airy (AR1835-1881) and Frank Dyson (AR 1910-1933). The earliest of their work probably dates from the late 1840s

Airy had nine children: 

George Richard (1831–1839)
Elizabeth (1833–1852)
Arthur (1834–1839)
Wilfrid (1836–1925)
Hubert (1838–1903)
Hilda (1840–1916)
Christabel (1842–1917)
Annot (1843–1924)
Osmund (1845–1929)

George and Arthur died whilst still young children. The rest all spent their formative years growing up at the Observatory, but only Hubert seems to have left his mark carving both his name and initials in close proximity. Like his father and brothers Wilfred and Osmund he went on to study at Trinity College Cambridge before becoming a physician. 

Dyson had eight Children, four of whom were known by their second names. They were: 

Caroline Stella (1895–1982) known as Stella
Evelyn Frances (b.1897), known as Eve
Agnes Sylvia (b.1898) known as Syliva
Ethel Margaret (b.1899) known as Margaret or Margie
Frank Palemon (b.1900–1969) known as Palemon
Watson Harold (b.1904–1987)
Elsie Gertrude (1906–1961) 
Ruth Helena Clara (b.1913–2001). 

The two boys were both responsible for carving their names into the Observatory's brickwork. Whilst Palemon's name appears on  both on the old wall of the Sextant House and the eastern wall of the Western Summerhouse, his younger brother,  Watson, seems to have confined himself to the vicinity of the Summerhouse where he carved his name multiple times, the earliest dating from when he was around seven or eight years old.

As well as carving his name in the brickwork, Palemon had a habit of climbing in places where he shouldn't. In her biography of her father, Margaret recounts the following anecdote about herself and Palemon:

'Jack and Gwen Gaster were of about the same ages as Margie and Palemon Dyson, and the four children formed a quartet. All four were enthusiastic tree-climbers and roof-climbers. Dyson objected to finding the children on roofs of the Observatory buildings, and one day said to Palemon severely:- "Now don't let me find you climbing anywhere else;" then, with a twinkle, he added jokingly:- "unless of course you want to climb my big dome: if you must climb, climb that !" Palemon took his father at his word, and a few days later somebody called at the Observatory in great perturbation:- "Do you know there's a boy on the great dome?" Palemon was got down safely, but  Dyson didn't joke on the subject again. If the dome had been opened while the boy was on it, he might have been hurled into space.'

Both Palemon and Watson attended Westminster School, where Palemon became head boy in 1918. In later life, he was an eminent civil engineer! Watson later studied at Trinity College Cambridge, spending the rest of his working life in the chemical industry.

 

The east wall of Flamsteed's Sextant House

Despite the fact that Flamsteed's Sextant House saw more structural changes than any other building on the Greenwich site, parts of the original brickwork survived until the end of 2026 when the whole structure was scandalously demolished. A brief summary of the changes made is given below:

	1675/6		Sextant House constructed for Flamsteed
	c.1721		Sextan House used as a pigeon house (Baily’s Flamsteed p.346).
	c.1764		Sextant House 'fitted up with a stone Floor, & a circular versatile Roof, for the receptions of the forty inch moveable Quadrant' (RGO6/21/49). It was probably at this time that a large window was introduced into the eastern wall.
	1779		North wall raised and steep wooden roof with sliding shutters sloping down to the south installed and the large window bricked up. The building was referred to as the Advanced Building on account of it being ‘advanced to the south of the [Bradley] Quadrant Room’ (RS MS600/59).
	1844		Construction of a three story tower and dome on the existing brick walls of the Advanced Building, a new but smaller window being opened up where the earlier window had been. Known as the South Dome, it was built to house Airy's Altazimuth Telescope.
	1857		Doorway created at the south end of the east wall during the construction of the Tower Passage linking the garden behind Flamsteed House to the Garden behind the Meridian Building.
	1960s		Site handed over to National Maritime Museum and the building converted back to its approximate appearance in Flamsteed's time. The two upper stories External seventeenth century brickwork retained and new brickwork inserted in the east wall where the Tower Passage doorway and and earlier window(s) had been. External ground level raised slightly.
	2009		Construction of a ramp leading up to the doorway at the northern end and the building and used as a ticket office. External ground level raised again.
	2023 Nov 14		The Museum given permission to demolish the building despite it being part of a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade 1 listed building as well as being part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site and where Flamsteed made most of his observations between 1676 and 1689.
	2026/7		Building scheduled for demolition.

 

 

The Eastern and Western Summerhouses

 

The South Building

Originally known as the New Physical Building or New Physical Observatory, the South Building was constructed in phases between 1891 and 1899. The known graffitti is constrained to a small patch of brickwork on the south facing wall of the south wing (which was the first of the four wings to be constructed). All the graffiti is thought to have been put there between 1891 and 1901.

 

Acknowlegements 

The image from the British Museum (Museum number: 1865,0610.947) is 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. It has been cropped and recompressed for this website

The Pencil drawings dated 28 May 1838 (RGO116/3/2) and (RGO116/3/13) are reproduced courtesy of Cambridge Digital Library. Both have been cropped from the original. It is been reproduced under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License