Day Six: Greenwich Mean Time

 It's my last full day in London and it was very much scheduled to be a busy one. The bus route took us through the business/political district of London, not an area I have been to already, so I was a little bit disorientated when I got off the bus. Google had told me to get off the bus, I wasn't sure it had me in the right place until I turned around...

 

Oh, there's the Abbey

The signage for where to line up to enter wasn't particularly clear and a small crowd of us had gathered at the doors seen in the above photo. Whilst we gathered there, I did notice that the statues above the door were a little more modern than the gothic architecture would have you believe. Ten modern martyrs grace the Great West Door, including Dr Martin Luther King Jnr.

 

The actual entrance was slightly further around to the left and from there our tickets were checked before opening time, we were let into the grounds of the abbey and organised into groups for entry at 9:30am where our tickets were properly scanned.I had about thirty minutes to have a brief look around before my Hidden Highlights Tour but given the enourmous number of people already in the doors, I didn't wander far from the entrance.

The rose window of the North Transept

The Hidden Highlights Tour is excellent in that it takes you away from the crowds and shows you unexpected aspects of the Abbey. The tour itself actually started outside, in an excavation site where the Abbey hopes to build a fresh visitors center. The excavations have uncovered not only the foundations of some of the original Abbey buildings, but also the graves of Anglo-Saxon workers and 12th century monks. It's hard to imagine a place so old and it is impressive the diligent work being undertaken to preserve what remains. In fact, whilst we were there our tour was partly interrupted by a couple of management and engineers looking over what had been recently excavated to make decisions about next steps.

We then returned into the Abbey to the West Door, where we were shown the Coronation Chair. On this chair, the monarch of the UK is crowned - obviously most recently King Charles III. There is space beneath the chair for the Stone of Destiny (Stone of Scone) to be placed, because tradition dictates the King of Scotland must be crowned upon it (and England stole it many centuries ago and starting doing it themselves). The stone is not currently in place - I'll be visiting it later - but the chair itself is on display. You can see that the chair has hundreds of initials carved into it, a result of schoolboys from the Westminster School over many years. 

 

Next we went "behind the scenes" to the vestry and saw some of the oldest stained glass windows in England. A lot of stained glass in England dates after the reformation, as all emblems of Catholicism were destroyed. For an unknown reason, the windows in the vestry that face the deanery were left alone. Even more miraculous, the deanery was destroyed in the 1940s during the London Blitz by a German Bomb, but mere meters away the windows remained completely unharmed.

The other item of note inside the vestry is the record book. As in most churches, the record book tracks the services conducted each day. In most churches this might seem like a mundane item, but at the Abbey one could find the notes for the coronation of King Charles III and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine.

Our tour continued into the Jerusalem Chamber. Built in the 1300s and featuring the original roof, this chamber is today used for meetings and private gatherings. The walls feature exquisite tapestries. It was pointed out to us that one of the tapestries has been cut to fit in its slot, as frame was built without measuring the tapestry. The room itself has seen many historical events including the death of Henry IV, writing of a number of bibles and even held the coffin of Sir Isaac Newton before his funeral.

Heading through the historic cloisters and dodging school children as they ran to their classrooms, we headed to the ruins of 12th century chapel St Catherine's. According to our tour guide it was here that the hierarchy between the archbishop of Canterbury, who is ‘primate of All England’, and the archbishop of York, who is ‘primate of England’, was decided (of sorts.) We continued out to the college gardens, which have been cultivated for over 900 years originally as a vegetable plot for the monks.

 

The final stop on the tour was the brand new Queen Diamond Jubilee Galleries, located in the Triforium. Released from the confines of the tour to wander, there you could see the death masks of kings and queens, artworks, and a copy of Magna Carta (not as small or in as good condition as the Salisbury one, but very cool none-the-less). One could wander up there for hours, but I did have a time limit and quite a few things to see.

One of the biggest problems with the Hidden Highlights Tour is you're left at the end of the loop around the Abbey. Because of crowds, the Abbey guides you in a set pathway throughout, so that general tourists will see pretty much everything. Having a couple of things to tick off as having seen, I did fight the tide a little bit and made my way to the tomb of Queen Elizabeth I, saw the spectacular vaulted ceilings of the the Lady Chapel and witnessed the massive number of memorials in poet's corner. A staff member kindly let me cut across a roped off area back into the right direction of the loop so I could see the memorial to Issac Newton (and a few other scientists). 

 

The effigy of Queen Elizabeth I upon her tomb

This photo fails to capture the immense detail and fine carving of the Lady Chapel vaulting. Truly a jaw-to-the-floor moment

 

Reliving Year 8 English in Poet's Corner - Chaucer was one of the first buried here

The memorial to Sir Isaac Newton (and just a small bit of Stephen Hawking's gravestone at the bottom there)

One thing that I did notice was that whilst I was attending, there was an active service of morning prayer being conducted. It must be so difficult to meaningfully participate in a service when hundreds of tourists are traipsing past, the sound of them speaking echoing throughout the Abbey. Certainly made me grateful that St Peter's was not open for tourists on the Sunday morning I had attended. Whilst I had a lot more that I could have seen, I was losing patience with the crowds and decided to make a move slightly earlier than planned to Greenwich.

 

To get to Greenwich I decided to be a touristy as possible and took the Uberboat (yes, as in Uber the company), which is basically a ferry, along the Thames. It was really nice to see London from a different angle, although the weather and the route didn't make for any good photography unfortunately. But the trip was smooth and really enjoyable. On arrival in Greenwich I walked past the Cutty Sark which is ashore and explorable for a fee, grabbed a quick lunch at a local tavern before quickly dashing into the Old Naval College before it closed. 

 

 The reason for visiting the Old Naval College is for the famous painted hall. I had managed to time my trip to get the last guided tour of the hall for the day. The Painted Hall features more than 3,700 square metres of Baroque walls and ceilings.Our tour guide pointed out various important sections of these paintings, predominately elements of the artwork that served as propaganda to promote the (at the time) now House of Hanover, who became the rulers of England when George I was crowned, being the senior Protestant descendant of his great-grandfather James VI and I.The paintings promised peace and prosperity, and more importantly fertile monarchs after a period of uncertainty where many rulers died without issue.

They provide a mirror table and couches to lie down and appreciate the ceiling

After getting kicked out of the Old Naval College, I climbed the hill to the Greenwich Observatory - the true purpose of my plans in Greenwich. The observatory is arguably the home of standardised time - it's where the Meridian is located, was calculated. The museum also features the history of Royal Astronomers and how the problem of telling time at sea was solved. Greenwich observatory also featured the Radcliffe camera, which wasn't the best in a typical London rainy day, but if you stayed inside long enough and let your eyes adjust, the image could be made out. I was very amused in the gift shop at the key rings you could buy of the moon - to a resident of the Southern Hemisphere, it looked upside down!

 

 

In my prime (meridian!)

The Great Equatorial Telescope - one of the largest refracting telescopes in the world

Don't think it would see much today

The image projected by the Radcliffe Camera - all from a tiny hole in the roof

When everything touristy was shut, I had one more mission to complete. Having secured my ticket to Trooping the Colour on Saturday; the forecast was for rain. In the confirmation email, the instructions strictly said no umbrella, so I needed to get my hands on a raincoat. First step was to cross the Thames. To achieve that, rather than being boring and just jumping onto the nearest public transport, I decided to take the 370m long Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

 

No ice cream?! (found near the Greenwich tunnel entrance)

The tunnel was opened in 1902 and is used by approximately 4,000 people a day. There is a section at the northern end that was badly damaged in World War II that has been rebuilt with thick steel lining the walls. Amusingly, there is significant no cycling signage throughout the tunnel, but I counted 21 bike riders ignoring it all. 

The Old Naval College - viewed from the park near the exit of the Greenwich Tunnel

 

The tunnel exit is near Canary Wharf (very exciting for Doctor Who fans, beware of cybermen) and I went on a quick excursion to try and find a raincoat. First stop was a Marks & Spencer, which is very similar to a Myer. I did find one raincoat there, but it was very expensive and I wasn't sure I was prepared to spend that much on what may be a one use item.Running low on time I took the tube into the CBD district to have a look what I could find. I tried a Tk Maxx, which had a lot of name brand items but no raincoats before hitting the jackpot at Primark. 

The theatres in the area must have finished their shows because it was packed on the streets. After grabbing McDonald's for dinner (it was 10pm and I still hadn't eaten), I joined the mob on the trains to make my way back to St Monica's. It's been a big day and tomorrow is another early rise.