The Complete Guide to Greenwich Park

Greenwich Park is without doubt one of London's most beautiful open spaces, but it is also one of its most historical and interesting, a fact the United Nations considered when they made it a World Heritage Site. This extensive guide to the park with over 200 illustrations leaves no Blackheath pebble unturned in uncovering its fascinating story.

In 2024 a major project completed in the park and this new edition reflects those changes and provides other updates to the text.

Find out about:

• Its special natural environment
• Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Viking inhabitants
• How it became a Royal Park
• The Tudor's love of Greenwich
• Queen's and their house
• The Frenchmen who shaped the park
• Fascinating underground tunnels and reservoirs
• Why Greenwich is zero degrees longitude
• An outrageous fair
• The secrets of its trees
• Pioneering gardens
• The deer and other wildlife

Go on a journey through time starting before the last ice-age through to the modern day. Find out about the hills that give the park its amazing views and made it an ideal place for people to settle. See who came to the park and how it became a favourite place for kings and queens, starting with King Alfred and ending with Charles II who left when he could not have the giant cascade her wanted.

See how the Mollet's and Le Notre shaped the park with avenues, leaving behind one of the best preserved baroque park designs in England today. Find out how the needs of the Naval Hospital changed the park and was responsible for some of the more mysterious features that are still present today.

Discover why the observatory is here, how it was built using old gunpowder and why it ended up reshaping the steps that Charles II created and Samuel Pepys thought were so grand.

Find out how people used the park and visit the infamous Greenwich Fair. Experience the day that an anarchist blew himself up on the path up to the observatory.

Finally learn about the best feature of the park that you have probably always noticed but never really thought about... its trees! Understand why the grass is so thin and the unusual nature of the insects that love the sandy soil.

Whatever your interest in the park, this guide will have something for you. It makes a great souvenir as well as a handy guide to understanding all its features.

This paperback is colour throughout.