The Tudor Palace at Greenwich

Abstract

THE TUDOR PALACE at Greenwich was begun in 1497, on the site of a • former mansion, itself once part of an ecclesiastical manor house, sequestrated to the Crown in 1414. After various additions, and some modernising in the seventeenth century, it was demolished in stages from 1663, the final portions disappearing shortly before 1700. The later history of the site is detailed elsewhere. In brief, the Tudor building was replaced at first by a new palace for Charles II, but before completion this was abandoned and the part-finished wings were surrendered to be accommodation for the newly-created Greenwich Hospital. In 1874 the buildings were placed in the hands of th~ Navy as the Royal Naval College, which has recently become the University of Greenwich .. Discoveries on the site had long been made during the installationofscrvices and drains around the central Grand Square of the College. Proposals to re-landscape the Square led Sir John Summerson and Howard Colvin to propose a prior excavation of the grassed areas before works began, in order to establish the accuracy of the many drawings and paintings of the palace, and to locate the buildings more precisely in advance of the publication of the palace in the appropriate volume of The History of the King's Works.1 Excavations began in the summer of 1970, and were continued in the spring of 1971, at the end of which all available areas of the grass were occupied with either cuttings or spoil heaps: the decision not to remove the up cast from site prevented further excavations at this stage (Plate 1A). Since the completion of the main work, some further digging has taken place near the Tilt yard, at various sites between the· College buildings and the nineteenth-century Dreadnought Hospital, and at the eastern side of the Queen Anne building, where the end of the Tudor Chapel has been uncovered. Work continues on the writing of these excavations, and they play little part in the following account. At the time of the earlier work it was not the practice to fund the preparation of the results of excavations, and despite approaches to various bodies it has so far not proved possible to arrange a programme of postexcavation work on the 1970-1 excavations, responsibility for which has fallen between several stools. In 1972 the present writer funded the processing and paid for the publication of a small monograph on the work, and this remains the sole account.2 At the start of the 1970 excavations the only part of the palace still standing was a large brick vaulted structure, which pretty certainly represented the basement