Better known today for its hospital, the museum and now perhaps the Millennium Dome, Greenwich was beloved of the Tudor monarchs, and also much liked by James I and Charles I, who built the modest Queen’s House for Henrietta Maria.It is to the later Stuarts that Greenwich owes its greatest monument, the naval hospital. Originally a scheme of James II, it was pursued by William III after Mary’s death as a memorial to her. But it was John Evelyn who, as a former naval administrator and treasurer to the charity, raised enough money for building to start under Christopher Wren, with Nicholas Hawksmoor as clerk of works. Its curious plan, of two identical wings on either side of the Queen’s House, came about as the house remained in royal use well into the 18th century.In 1865 the Seamen’s Hospital closed, largely as potential inmates preferred to take a pension and live elsewhere.

Eight years later it reopened as the Naval College, with the Royal Naval Museum. Later the latter became the National Maritime Museum, moving into the Queen’s House in 1937 – and recently reopened, magnificently refurbished and extended.As elsewhere, the fields and gardens of Greenwich were laid out in speculative housing during the 19th century. To water transport were added trams and trains; the LCC provided a tunnel under the Thames in 1902 for south Londoners to get to the thriving factories on the Isle of Dogs. In an area now dominated by Canary Wharf, it is hard to conceive the dereliction after the closure of the docks in the Seventies, though that dereliction provided the opportunity to erect the Millennium Dome.Greenwich’s real significance lies in the knowledge and persistence of the Astronomers Royal who developed accurate time-keeping. The Greenwich meridian became zero longitude, accepted throughout the world in 1874. The selection of a royal park, well removed from the smoky atmosphere of Stuart London, for the Royal Observatory means that today the world speaks of GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, and that, technically, the millennium will start there.. I WAS somewhat surprised that Ken Clarke explained the silence of Conservative pro-Europeans about Mr Hague’s extreme Eurosceptic platform in the European elections as putting party loyalty before principle.

My impression was that they simply thought Hague was going to do badly, a misjudgement shared by Labour. Those of us in the campaign knew better, but our warnings were ignored. At least Mr Blair had the excuse that he was distracted by foreign affairs, rather than just by foreign travel. Ken Clarke is, of course, right that this failure to speak out contributed greatly to Mr Hague’s victory – which was thus entirely avoidable! The creation of the Pro Euro Conservative list was based on the expectation that senior Conservatives who shared our view would attack Hague, should opposition to EMU become his central campaign theme. We had very good reasons for this expectation.
Above all, if Hague succeeded, getting Britain into the euro on a time- scale that would avoid damage to vital British interests must become much more difficult.