The south-east London district of Greenwich has a rich maritime history and is most famous for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian (0˚ longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) - the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory - which became accepted as a global time standard.
There has been a market at Greenwich since the fourteenth century and it is here that you can buy some quirky gifts at the numerous art and craft stalls, while the nearby Blackheath Farmers’ Market takes place every Sunday in the car park at Blackheath Railway Station and includes fresh milk from Sussex, fish from the east coast and Andrew Lingham’s beef pasties.
Greenwich is also a great place to head for a meal, and you can choose from street food to traditional pie and mash at Goddards, established in 1890, to gastropubs to modern European food at Inside Restaurant.
From the fifteenth century, the town of Greenwich became the site of a royal palace, the Palace of Placentia, where both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were born, and in the twentieth century the area’s maritime heritage was celebrated with the siting of the Cutty Sark (a clipper ship) and Gipsy Moth IV next to the river, and the National Maritime Museum in the former buildings of the Royal Hospital School in 1934.
