Qualla: Old Royal Naval College

Old Royal Naval College: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark from Brighton, CC BY 2.0. Stand at the river end of the Old Royal Naval College and look upstream toward the city, and you understand why UNESCO calls this the finest and most dramatically sited architectural and landscape ensemble in the British Isles. Two enormous Wren-designed quadrangles frame a deliberate gap, opening a long axial view from the Thames straight up the hill to the Queen's House and Greenwich Park beyond. The gap is deliberate. When Queen Mary II commissioned a hospital for wounded sailors on this site in 1692, she insisted that Christopher Wren's new buildings must not block the existing line of sight from the river to the older Queen's House. So Wren split his design in two. The result is one of the great pieces of Baroque urban theatre in Europe.

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Image: Mark from Brighton | CC BY 2.0

Old Royal Naval College: Bella Court, Then Greenwich Palace

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KRaikkonen01, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before the college, before the hospital, this riverbank was a Tudor royal palace. The site began as Bella Court, built in the 1430s by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV. It was confiscated by Queen Margaret of Anjou in 1447 and later rebuilt by Henry VII....

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Image: KRaikkonen01 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Royal Naval College: Mary's Hospital

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1692, watching wounded sailors return from the Battle of La Hogue against the French, Queen Mary II decided that England's seamen deserved what its soldiers had at Chelsea: a permanent home for the injured and aged. She ordered the creation of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at ...

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Image: Txllxt TxllxT | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Royal Naval College: The College Years

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jordiferrer, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hospital closed in 1869, and in 1875 the remains of thousands of sailors and officers were exhumed and reinterred in East Greenwich Pleasaunce - sometimes called Pleasaunce Park - a few hundred metres east. Four years later, in 1873, the empty buildings were converted into a ...

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Image: Jordiferrer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Royal Naval College: Nelson, Briefly

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. In January 1806 the body of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was brought to Greenwich. He had been killed at Trafalgar three months earlier, and his coffin - carried up the Thames in a barge that had once belonged to Charles II - was held in a small room here before lying in state in ...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Old Royal Naval College: A Living Site

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was MykReeve at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. Since 1998 the site has been gradually opened up to the public, free of charge. In 1999 the University of Greenwich leased parts of Queen Mary, King William, and the whole of Queen Anne and the Dreadnought Building on 150-year terms. In 2000 Trinity College of Music leased King C...

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Image: The original uploader was MykReeve at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0