Greenwich history

The name is Anglo-Saxon for “Green port”. Greenwich Palace belonged to the Tudors, and Henry VIII, Queen Mary and Elizabeth I were all born there. James I’s wife built the Queen’s House. During the civil war, the palace was occupied by Oliver Cromwell. King Charles II started building a new palace, but only completed one wing before his death. It is now the Royal Naval College. The Royal Observatory was founded in Greenwich in 1675. In 1884, an international conference set up to establish a common measure for longitude, decided that a meridian line passing through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich should be the prime or zero, from which all others would be measured. The lands surrounding the Palace were turned into a public park as Greenwich Park.