Greenwich

Remains of a probably Celtic oppidum, set up sometime between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE, were found at Woolwich between Beresford Street and the Thames. In the late Roman period it was re-used as a fort.

Burial mounds in Greenwich Park, south-west of Flamsteed House, are thought to be early Bronze Age barrows that the Saxons re-used as burial grounds in the 6th century. The park has a large Anglo-Saxon burial ground dating from between AD 480 and AD 700. In 2015 Oxford Archaeology found a Saxon burial site near the riverside at Woolwich, with 76 skeletons from the late 7th or early 8th century.

Greenwich is recorded as Grenewic in 964, and as Grenawic in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1013.

A church dedicated to St Luke is recorded in Charlton as early as 1077. It was first a chalk and flint building, and no trace of the medieval church survives. It was rebuilt in the Jacobean style in 1630.

The Domesday Book of 1086 calls Greenwich Grenviz, and records its manor as held by Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Charlton is in the Domesday Book as Cerletone.

In 1093 the manor of Charlton was given to Bermondsey Abbey by Bishop Robert Bloet of Lincoln. In 1268 the abbey was granted a Monday market at Charlton, and a three-day fair every year around Trinity Sunday.

There has been a royal palace or hunting lodge at Greenwich since before 1300, when King Edward I is known to have made offerings at the chapel of the Virgin Mary. Later monarchs were regular visitors, and Henry IV made his will here.

The Woolwich Ferry was first mentioned in 1308, but it may be older.

The palace was created by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the younger brother of King Henry V. He enclosed the park and built a tower, Greenwich Castle, on the hill where the Royal Observatory now stands.

King Edward IV completed and enlarged the palace, and in 1466 he granted it to his queen, Elizabeth.

Edward IV had been given permission by the Pope to set up a friary of Franciscan Observant Friars in Greenwich. It opened in 1485, two years after his death, next to the palace: the first Observant House in England. It was closed and re-opened more than once after 1534; the friars were finally expelled in 1559, and the friary was demolished in 1662.

For centuries the land between the Thames and today's A206 road at Woolwich has been filled with docks, warehouses and factories, starting with the Royal Dockyard early in the 16th century. Throughout the 18th century the navy yard was the town's main employer, with between 500 and 1,400 men working in the docks.

Between 1607 and 1612 Sir Adam Newton, tutor to Prince Henry, the eldest son of King James I, had a new manor house, Charlton House, built in the village. The Jacobean mansion, by the architect John Thorpe, was never used by the prince. On the northern edge of its garden is a mulberry tree planted in 1608 by order of King James, to try to grow silkworms.

Trinity Hospital, an almshouse to the east of the Naval College, was founded in 1613. It is the oldest surviving building in Greenwich town centre.

The Queen's House was built between 1616 and 1635. King Charles I gave it to Henrietta Maria in 1629.

In 1665 Samuel Pepys stayed in Woolwich to escape the Great Plague. The town's population then was estimated at 1,200 or more, and about 300 of them worked in the dockyard.

King Charles II commissioned the Royal Observatory in 1675 to improve navigation.

The Royal Naval College, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was built between 1696 and 1712. The Painted Hall, designed by Sir James Thornhill, was painted between 1707 and 1726, with Baroque walls and ceilings.

There has been a market at Greenwich since the 14th century. In 1700 a charter to run two markets, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, was assigned by Lord Romney to the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital for 1,000 years. The buildings around today's market went up in 1827–1833 under the direction of Joseph Kay.

St Alfege Church, which goes back to the Middle Ages, was rebuilt in 1712–1714 to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Sir John Vanbrugh built Vanbrugh Castle in 1719 for his own family, in a medieval revival style. Ranger's House, a Georgian mansion, was built in 1722 by John James for Vice-Admiral Francis Hosier.

In the 18th century the Royal Regiment of Artillery and the Corps of Royal Engineers were set up in Woolwich, followed by the Royal Military Academy. The number of artillery men grew from around 200 in 1716 to around 1,500 in 1801. James Wyatt's Royal Artillery Barracks (1776–1802) has the longest façade in London, along the north end of the common.

In the 1650s the Board of Ordnance was allowed to test guns at an area of Woolwich known as the Warren. The Warren grew from a place of storage into armament factories, military stores and research establishments, which King George III named the Royal Arsenal in 1805.

The Trafalgar Tavern was built in 1837 by the architect Joseph Kay. It became a fashionable Victorian riverside destination, attracting politicians and writers like Charles Dickens.

The North Kent Line from London through Greenwich and Woolwich to Gillingham opened in 1849.

In 1863 the German firm Siemens & Halske set up a factory making submarine cables in the Woolwich dockyard area. The Siemens Brothers Telegraph Works made two new transatlantic cables in the 1880s, and contributed to PLUTO in the Second World War.

The Cutty Sark, built by Hercules Linton, was laid down in 1869. It was one of the last and fastest British tea clippers, and it is now one of the borough's main tourist attractions.

The Horn Fair, or Charlton Fair, was held every year on 18 October and had a reputation for lawlessness. It was abolished in 1872, along with the livestock fairs of nearby Blackheath, by order of the Home Secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.

British sailors kept at least one chronometer set to Greenwich Mean Time, to work out their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was counted as zero degrees. In 1884 the Greenwich Meridian at the Royal Observatory was adopted as the Prime Meridian.

Woolwich Polytechnic was founded in 1891. In 1970 it merged with other local colleges to become Thames Polytechnic, in 1992 it was granted university status, and a year later it was renamed the University of Greenwich. In 2001 the university moved to the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

Eltham Well Hall station opened in 1895. The village streets next to Eltham Palace and the land around stayed rural until Archibald Cameron Corbett bought the Eltham Park Estate and built suburban housing on it between 1900 and 1914.

The Greenwich foot tunnel opened on 4 August 1902. Its entrance is in a round building near the Cutty Sark.

In 1915 the Government built the Progress Estate in Well Hall, and large estates of temporary huts, to house the many more wartime workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.

King George VI formally opened the National Maritime Museum in 1937.

The Royal Naval College had a training reactor, called JASON, in the King William building. It worked from 1962 to 1996, and was decommissioned and removed in 1999.

The London Borough of Greenwich was created in 1965 by joining the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich with the part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich south of the River Thames.

Woolwich declined as a town in the late 20th century. The Royal Ordnance Factory closed in 1967 and the Siemens factory in 1968, and the Royal Arsenal scaled back its work until it finally closed in 1994.

In 1974 the United Kingdom's first branch of McDonald's opened in Powis Street, one of Woolwich's main shopping streets.

On 3 February 2012, to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, Greenwich became a royal borough, in recognition of its historic links with the Royal Family and its status as home of the Prime Meridian and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was the third London borough with this status; the other two are Kingston upon Thames and Kensington & Chelsea.

The 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics held shooting events at Woolwich, in temporary venues in the grounds of the Royal Artillery Barracks and on Woolwich Common. On 28 June 2012 a cable car linking Greenwich Peninsula to the Royal Docks opened.