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in 1635. This beautiful house set the fashion for the big country
seats which subsequently sprang up all over England.
Following the execution of Charles I, the Palace of Placentia
fell into disrepair and, during the Gromwellian period, valuable
furnishings and pictures were sold. It was the same story with
Eltham Palace to which, unfortunately, full reparations were not
made until the middle 1930's. However, at Greenwich, on the
restoration of Charles II in 1660, the older buildings were
demolished for an intended new palace but only one of the four
blocks forming the present Royal Naval College was begun. The
remaining three blocks were completed by Queen Ann and
William and Mary, respectively, with the laudable aim of providing
a Royal Hospital for Naval Seamen. For this purpose, a
commission had been set up with John Evelyn, the diarist, as its
treasurer but it was some years before the Hospital was eventually
completed by Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and later architects in accordance
with the overall plans of Christopher Wren. This group of
imposing and stately buildings, now the Navy's University, were
themselves to become equally famous as the original palace for
they now house the nation's Maritime Museum.
Meanwhile, at Woolwich, the foundations of a Royal Arsenal
were laid with the erection of a Rope Yard in 1573 to serve the
nearby dockyards where Phineas Pett, the first Master of the Shipwright's
Company, was designing and building most of the navy's
famous ships. Some 50 years later, the Warren was being used
for gun testing and by the end of the 17th century the Lieutenant
General of Ordnance was resident at the Warren and the manufacture
of other war materials was proceeding. Previous to 1716,
the government's guns were cast at Moorfields but, following a
serious accident there, the Royal Brass Foundry at Woolwich
was completed a year later to the designs of Sir John Vanbrugh
to undertake these duties. Many of the buildings erected at that
time were completed by convict labour which was accommodated
in hulks moored offshore in the Thames. Resulting from a visit
by George III in 1805, the establishment became known as the
Royal Arsenal. As a centre for research, design, manufacture and
testing of military stores and equipment, the Royal Arsenal was
unsurpassed. Modern requirements have demanded a curtailment
and concentration of these particular skills and now plans are for
much of the land to be utilised by the Greater London Council
for housing purposes.
The year 1716 also saw the establishment of the Royal Regiment
of Artillery with permanent headquarters at Woolwich. Originally
housed at the Warren, the regiment became too large for its
quarters and a move to new barracks on Woolwich Common was