SUNDAY 21ST September 2008
OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE GREENWICH

A trip to the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich - which is now my favourite place on earth.


The Old Royal Naval College was formerly a Royal Navy training establishment between 1873 and 1998, in the centre of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site in London. It provided a number of courses for naval officers including being home to the Royal Navy's staff college, the staff course providing advanced training for mid-ranking officers.

After the Navy moved out in 1998, The Greenwich Foundation, a registered charity, signed a 150-year lease and took responsibility for looking after the buildings and their grounds for the benefit of the nation. Three of the main courts, Queen Anne, Queen Mary and King William are occupied by the University of Greenwich and the Trinity School of Music is based in King Charles court. The Foundation manages the Painted Hall and the Chapel, the related undercrofts, the Visitor Centre and the grounds.

The buildings were originally constructed to serve as the Greenwich Hospital, designed by Christopher Wren, and built between 1696 and 1712. The hospital closed in 1869. The site was formerly occupied by the pre-Tudor "Palace at Greenwich" – also known as the Palace of Placentia – built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in 1428.

I'd been looking forward to visiting the Painted Hall for weeks, but nothing can quite prepare you for the astounding artwork. This is the sight that greets you as you walk in the door - which already had my jaw on the floor.

Described as the finest dining hall in the Western world, The Painted Hall is decorated with paintings by James Thornhill. This was planned to be the hospital's dining hall. Thornhill's decoration took nineteen years to complete. For his ‘great and laborious undertaking’ Thornhill was paid by the yard – and eventually knighted. While Thornhill worked, more and more pensioners were coming to Greenwich. Pensioners could not eat in the Hall while he was working and it was both too grand and too much of a tourist attraction when finished.

The Painted Hall stood empty until January 1806, when the body of Admiral Lord Nelson was brought to lie in state: he had been killed at the moment of his victory over Napoleon's fleet at Cape Trafalgar.

Wren submitted the designs in 1698, and the roof and the dome above were in place five years later.

This the ceiling of the Painted Hall - luckily I was armed with a 12mm super-wide heliar and an extremely flexible neck, the combination of which managed to capture just about the entire painting.

From the ORNC: "The allegorical theme of the huge and exuberant Lower Hall ceiling is the triumph of Peace and Liberty over Tyrany, and pays due tribute to William and Mary and British maritime power. Within the oval frame are the four seasons - Winter was modelled by one of the pensioners, John Worley, an energetic Greenwich pensioner still being punished for drunkenness and swearing at the age of 96."

The ceiling in the rear hall.

"Beyond the arch in the Upper Hall Queen Anne surveys the continents of the world (America reputedly represented by an image of Pocahontas), while on the west wall her Hanoverian successors, George I and his family, are shown in sober glory. Elsewhere much use is made of trompe l’oeil painting, on the columns, windowsills and in the Vestibule."

Just over the way, is the equally stunning Chapel of St Peter and St Paul. This was the last major element in the Hospital’s construction and was completed to Thomas Ripley’s design in 1752. It had a plainer interior than the present one and was typical of English Baroque in relying for its effect on space and proportion rather than embellishment. There was a flat, coffered ceiling, an apse at the east end and galleries – though less ornate than the present ones.

In 1779 the chapel was gutted by fire, thought to have been started by smoking in an adjacent tailor’s workshop. It was redesigned and rebuilt under the Surveyorship of James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, in the ‘Greek revival’ style for which he was famous, though the detailing was done by his Clerk of Works, William Newton, and it reopened in 1789.

Unlike many churches which are a mixture of styles through the ages, the Chapel is a complete and unaltered neoclassical period piece. When it was fully restored in the 1950s, various later wall tablets were relocated to the vestry and it is now almost as it was when opened on 20 September 1789.

Tower Bridge in the evening.

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