Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
21
THE DOME
[A] yellow-spiked Teflon tent… a genetically modified mollusc… The Dome is a blob of correction fluid, a flick
of Tipp-Ex to revise the mistakes of nineteenth-century industrialists… a poached egg designed by a
committee of vegans.
Iain Sinclair,
Sorry Meniscus
Clearly visible from Greenwich's riverside and park is the marquee-like former
Millennium
Dome
: over half a mile in circumference and 160ft in height, it's the world's largest dome, held
up by a dozen, 300ft, yellow steel masts. Built in 2000 at a cost of £800 million, it housed the
Millennium Experience exhibition, which was panned by critics and dismantled after one year.
Since then entertainment giants AEG spent another £600 million turning it into
The O2
(
W
theo2.co.uk), a mall of restaurants and bars, a museum space (currently occupied by the
British Music Experience;
W
britishmusicexperience.com), a nightclub, a multiplex cinema, and,
occupying forty percent of the Dome, the 23,000-seat
O2 Arena
, venue for sports events and
big name gigs. For a hefty fee (from £25), you can even climb up onto the roof of the Dome,
though the astronaut suits and the carabiners are more memorable than the view. Meanwhile,
the land to the southeast is being transformed into the Millennium Village, a conglomeration
of riverside flats, plus the mini-wetlands of the
Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park
(Wed-Sun 10am-5pm; free).
The easiest way to get to the Dome is to take the tube to
North Greenwich
, as the Dome
has its very own Will Alsop-designed tube station (with a bus station by Norman Foster). It's also
possible to walk or cycle the mile and a half along the riverside pathway from Greenwich. The
most enjoyable ways to reach the Dome, though, are by boat to the
QEII Pier
, or by
cable car
across the Thames from Royal Victoria DLR (see p.211). The Dome itself is fenced off, but you can
walk around the outside and admire the odd work of art: Antony Gormley's very busy
Quantum
Cloud
and Richard Wilson's
Slice of Reality
, the bridge of a boat cut away from its mother ship.
exhibitions on the first floor explore conditions of production, the fan's link with the
Empire and changing fashion. Outside, there's a tearoom, housed in the kitsch,
hand-painted orangery, with afternoon tea served (Wed & Sun 3pm).
Blackheath
South of Greenwich lies the well-to-do former village of
Blackheath
(so-called because
of the colour of the soil), whose bleak, windswept heath, crisscrossed with busy roads,
couldn't be more different from the adjacent royal park. Nonetheless, with its pair of
century-old pubs, the
Princess of Wales
and
Hare and Billet
, each set beside a pond, it
can be pleasant on a summer afternoon. The odd fair takes place here on public
holidays, and it's south London's chief kite-flying spot.
Lying on the main road to Dover, Blackheath was a convenient spot on which to
pitch camp, as the Danes did in 1011, having kidnapped St Alfege. During the
1381
Peasants' Revolt
, Wat Tyler's rebels were treated to a rousing revolutionary sermon by
John Bull, which included the famous lines “When Adam delved and Eve span, who
was then the gentleman?”
Henry V
was welcomed back from the Battle of Agincourt
here in 1415, while Henry VII fought the Cornish rebels here in 1497. It was at
Blackheath, also, that Henry VIII suffered disappointment on meeting his fourth wife,
Anne of Cleves
, in 1540; he famously referred to her as “the Flanders mare” and filed
for divorce after just six months.
The heath's chief landmark is the rugged Kentish ragstone
All Saints' Church
, a Victorian
church which nestles in a slight depression in the south corner. The most striking building
on the heath, though, is
The Paragon
, to the east, a crescent of four-storey Georgian
mansions linked by Doric colonnades. An even earlier ensemble, set in its own grounds
further east, is
Morden College
, the aristocrat of almshouses, built in 1695 for “decayed
Turkey merchants” who'd lost their fortunes. The quadrangular red-brick building, built by
Wren's master mason, was designed to reflect the (lost) status of its original inhabitants.
