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The Manor of Greenwich

Meantime’s manor is Greenwich. It is an ancient and historic place. Consequently we recognise that, having tasted Meantime’s beers, you will want to visit our manor in orderto more easily sample Meantime’s beers in their natural habitat.

We have thoughtfully provided a condensed history of Greenwich, so that you may fully appreciate the grace and majesty of the Meantime brewery environment.

899	King Alfred settles Anglo-Saxin Gronovic on his youngest daughter Elstrudis on her marriage to Baldwin II, Count of Flanders. On his death in 918 she gifts the manor to the Abbey of Ghent who receive its rents until Henry V disallows possessions of foreign monasteries in 1414.

1011	Aelfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, held captive for ransom by Danes at Greenwich, Aelfheah refused to let the amassed sums be paid in his name. Danes in a drunken fury pelted him to death with the bones from a feast. St Alphege, as he became known, lent his name to Greenwich’s parish church, the present building being by Sir Christopher Wren’s protégé Nicholas Hawksmoor.

1381	Watt Tyler raises the standard of the Peasants Revolt on Blackheath.

1417	Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother of the late Henry V acquired the Manor of Greenwich, so commencing the longstanding association of Greenwich and royalty that was to result in Greenwich being chosen as the location of the Prime Meridian. Monarchs whose lives were intimately tied up with Greenwich included Henry VI, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I and Charles II.

1426	Duke Humphrey builds Bella Court and starts the country’s finest non-ecclesiastical library, which will form the foundation of Oxford’s Bodlean Library. Humphrey is murdered in 1447 and Henry VI’s wife Margaret of Anjou appropriates Bella Court and renames it Plesaunce. Henry VII then rebuilds it and renames it Palace of Placentia (pleasant place).

1491	Henry VIII born at Placentia.

1497	Henry VII suppresses rebellion of Cornishmen on Blackheath.

1513	Royal Naval Dockyards created at Deptford and Woolwich

1533	Elizabeth I christened in Greenwich.

1580	Elizabeth I knights Francis Drake at Deptford, following circumnavigation of the globe in the Golden Hind. The ship stays there as a tourist attraction until it rots.

1588	Elizabeth I sees beacon heralding Spanish Armanda from Greenwich and crosses Thames to Tilbury to rally troops, saying 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.'

1614	Royal premises gifted to wife of James I, Anne of Denmark. In 1617 she commissions Inigo Jones to start the Queen's House. Finished in 1640 as home for wife of Charles I, Henrietta Maria.

1665	Samuel Pepys and his wife retreat to Greenwich to flee plague in London.

1692(?)	British naval victory over Louis XIV of France at the Battle of La Hogue inspires Queen Mary II to build a hospital or almshouse for elderly or destitute seamen on the site of the old, and derelict royal Palace of Placentia.

1675	Charles II establishes Royal Observatory. John Flamsteed is first Astronomer Royal.

1694	Sir Christopher Wren appointed as the architect for the Royal Naval Hospital. He waives his fee so that he might 'Have some share in a work of mercy.' It was to be his last major work and was finished by others, including Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh. A French wag, noticing that the official royal residence in London, St James Palace was originally an old leper hospice until the time of Henry VIII, wrote 'The kings of England are lodged like invalids at the palace of St James, and the invalids of the Army and Navy like kings at Chelsea and Greenwich.

1697	Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia stays in Deptford to learn about navigation and shipbuilding. Spends most of his time getting drunk and wrecking home of the poet John Evelyn.

1771	Royal Hospital already failing, boredom is a big problem for the pensioners and conditions were not that comfortable. 'The privies were a perpetual source of offensive odours . . . and the beer tended to give convulsive gripes, being thick, sour and odourous.' The firm would like to point out that this was some 229 years before the establishment of the Meantime Brewing Company, and accordingly they would like to disassociate themselves from any responsibility and beer produced in Greenwich during the eighteenth century.

1792	Queen's House royal days being over, it is now used as headquarters for a smuggling gang.

1806	Pickled body of Lord Nelson laid in state for three days in the Painted Hall of the Naval College. London decamps to Greenwich en masse. 20,000 mourners turned away on 1st day.

1845	Greenwich now no longer separate from London as growing suburbs encroach.

1858	World's first rugby club founded at Blackheath.

1869	Deptford and Woolwich naval yards close due to silting up of Thames.

1886	Greenwich Peninsula gasworks open and become largest in Europe.

1902	Greenwich Foot Tunnel opened connecting Greenwich and Cubitt Town on Isle of Dogs.

1937	The National Maritime Museum opens.

1954	Cutty Sark arrives in Greenwich.

1966	Cult Antonioni movie Blow Up filmed in Maryon Park, Charlton.

1997	Greenwich designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, anticipating the establishment of the Meantime Brewing Company.

1999	Establishment of the Meantime Brewing Company Ltd at 16 Eversely Road Charlton.

2000	First brew takes place at Penhall Rd site in February; bottled in April. Setting Penhall Road well on way to becoming the most famous address in London.

2001	Meantime Brewing Co. open their first pub, The Greenwich Union, at 56 Royal Hill, Greenwich, within 18 months of opening it is shortlisted for the Time Out, Evening Standard and Class magazine Pub of the Year awards.

2004	Meantime becomes first UK brewery to produce a Fairtrade beer using coffee from the Abuhuzamugambi Co-operative in Rwanda supplied by Union Coffee Roasters situated across the Thames from Greenwich in West Ham.

2005	Meantime Brewery celebrates 5th birthday by rebranding and launching new product range, becoming first British brewery to put a champange cork in beer bottles. N.B. The more observant readers amongst you may have noticed that the history of Greenwich in the 21st Century is the history of the Meantime Brewing Company, as nothing else of note has happened.


	A fuller history of Greenwich may be obtained from 'Greenwhich, the Place Where Days Begin and End' - Charles Jennings (Abacus 2001).