July 8 : Sixth Day in London

The day started off with a local history lesson. Our hotel, the Windermere, has its breakfast room and pub in the basement. From the street level, you can descend a stairwell into the pub, or you can ascend some stairs into the hotel lobby. During Queen Victoria’s reign the breakfast room and pub were at street level, but public works have risen the street level considerably since then. The current owners of the hotel found a couple of rooms in the basement that had been walled off. Only thing missing is a good ghost story.

In the afternoon, we took a Thames River cruise. Our final destination was Greenwich. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian. The town became the site of a royal palace, the Palace of Placentia from the 15th century, and was the birthplace of many Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War and was demolished to be replaced by the Royal Naval Hospital for Sailors, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. These buildings became the Royal Naval College in 1873, and it stayed a naval college until 1998. Several male members of the royal family have graduated from this college.

The National Maritime Museum is also housed in these buildings. Inside there are many mastheads from historical vessels. Also, Cunard ships features prominent in the display. 

The Royal Observatory is on top of steep hill from the former college and contains the Greenwich Meridian. The Meridian is the point from which the world’s time zones are assigned.

In the evening we took a walking Ghost of London. It started at the Tower of London and ended at St. Paul’s Cathedral. At each point the guide told us about the local history and then told us a ghost story associated with that location. My favorite story was about the ghosts in the Tower of London. The beheading of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury took place on Tower Green. Brought to the scaffold by Henry VIII for the crime of being the mother of Cardinal Pole who opposed Henry’s self-created position as Supreme Head of the Church of England, Cardinal Pole had escaped to France, so  his mother Margaret Pole was condemned to death in his place. Eyewitnesses say the executioner on the fateful day in 1541 was a “wretched and blundering youth” who, unable to perform a clean execution with his axe, instead hacked at Margaret Pole’s head and shoulders.  Beefeaters for centuries have reported sightings of an executioner chasing a women missing an arm and a leg. .