Royal Naval College

The Royal Naval College stands in Greenwich, beside the Thames. Its grand Wren-designed buildings once housed Greenwich Hospital for disabled sailors. The college trained naval officers from 1873 until 1998, when the Navy left. It replaced the earlier Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth. The college also ran the Royal Naval War College from 1914, moving its activities back to Greenwich. The college’s wartime role was vital. During the First World War it became a barracks and research site. In the Second World War it trained around 35,000 officers of both sexes. In 1943 a German bomb damaged Admiral’s House in King Charles Court. In 1967 Queen Elizabeth II knighted solo circumnavigator Francis Chichester on the college’s river steps. Visitors now walk through the old hospital’s long corridors and King Charles Court. The King William building houses the former research reactor JASON. Painted Hall and Chapel remain open to the public. The site once held the medieval Palace of Placentia. The Thames offers views across to the Royal Observatory on the hill.