The palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War and was demolished, eventually being replaced by the Royal Naval Hospital for Sailors, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor.

The town became a popular resort in the 18th century, and many grand houses were built there, such as Vanbrugh Castle (1717) established on Maze Hill, next to the park.

Historically an ancient parish in the Blackheath Hundred of Kent, the town formed part of the growing conurbation of London in the 19th century.

An article in The Times of 13 October 1967 stated:[5] East Greenwich, gateway to the Blackwall Tunnel, remains solidly working class, the manpower for one eighth of London's heavy industry.

West Greenwich is a hybrid: the spirit of Nelson, the Cutty Sark, the Maritime Museum, an industrial waterfront and a number of elegant houses, ripe for development.

Royal charters granted to English colonists in North America,[6] as well as in Company Bombay and St Helena,[7] often used the name of the manor of East Greenwich for describing the tenure (from the Latin verb teneo, hold) as that of free socage.

Tumuli to the south-west of Flamsteed House,[14] in Greenwich Park, are thought to be early Bronze Age barrows re-used by the Saxons in the 6th century as burial grounds.

[4] During the reign of Ethelred the Unready, the Danish fleet anchored in the River Thames off Greenwich for over three years, and the army encamped on the hill above.

They stoned him to death for his refusal to allow his ransom (3,000 pieces of silver) to be paid; and kept his body, until the blossoming of a stick that had been immersed in his blood.

James I carried out the final remodelling work on Greenwich Palace, granting the manor to his wife Queen Anne of Denmark.

In 1616 Anne commissioned Inigo Jones to design and build the surviving Queen's House as the final addition to the palace.

His successor George II granted the Royal Hospital for Seamen the forfeited estates of the Jacobite Earl of Derwentwater, which allowed the building to be completed by 1751.

Extended with the buildings that now house the National Maritime Museum, it was renamed the Royal Hospital School by Queen Victoria in 1892.

Queen Victoria rarely visited Greenwich, but in 1845 her husband Prince Albert personally bought Nelson's Trafalgar coat for the Naval Gallery.

South of the railway's viaduct over Deptford Creek is a Victorian pumping station constructed in 1864 as part of Joseph Bazalgette's London sewerage system (the Southern Outfall Sewer flows under Greenwich town centre).

In 1853 the local Scottish Presbyterian community built a church, St Mark's, nearby which was extended twice in the 1860s during the ministry of Adolph Saphir, eventually accommodating 1,000 worshippers.

[24] The present Greenwich Theatre, further to the east, on Croom's Hill, was constructed inside the shell of a Victorian music hall.

Beginning life in 1855 as an annexe to the Rose and Crown, the music hall was rebuilt in 1871 by Charles Crowder and subsequently operated under many names.

Prince Albert, Duke of York (later George VI), laid the foundation stone of the new Royal Hospital School when it moved out to Holbrook, Suffolk.

[26] The status was granted in recognition of the borough's historic links with the monarchy, the location of the Prime Meridian and its being a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The higher areas consist of a sedimentary layer of gravelly soils, known as the Blackheath Beds, that spread through much of the south-east over a chalk outcrop—with sands, loam and seams of clay at the lower levels by the river.

Nearby for many years was also displayed Gipsy Moth IV, the 54 feet (16.5 m) yacht sailed by Sir Francis Chichester in his single-handed, 226-day circumnavigation of the globe during 1966–67.

On the riverside in front of the north-west corner of the hospital is an obelisk erected in memory of Arctic explorer Joseph René Bellot.

[40] The park rises towards Blackheath and at the top of this hill is a statue of James Wolfe, commander of the British expedition to capture Quebec.

Around the covered Greenwich Market, Georgian and Victorian architecture dominates in the town centre which spreads to the west of the park and Royal Naval College.

[44] The market is part of "the island site", bounded by College Approach, Greenwich Church Street, King William Walk and Nelson Road, near the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory.

But this practice, combined with mariners from other nations drawing from Nevil Maskelyne's method of lunar distances based on observations at Greenwich, eventually led to GMT being used worldwide as a reference time independent of location.

[52] In 1997 Maritime Greenwich was added to the list of World Heritage Sites, for the concentration and quality of buildings of historic and architectural interest.

Exhibits include: The University of Greenwich main campus occupies most of the grand, landmark riverside vista buildings of the former Royal Naval College.

[56] The Greenwich foot tunnel provides pedestrian access to the southern end of the Isle of Dogs, across the river Thames.