With British Summer Time starting this weekend, we present 10 facts you might not know about the home of time and the prime meridian – Greenwich’s Royal Observatory.

  1. At its largest, the Royal Observatory occupied a 2.64-acre area of Greenwich Park. Much of this site has now been absorbed back into the park.
  2. The Royal Observatory houses the largest refracting telescope in the UK.
  3. The original part of the observatory was built for a cost of £520 (£20 over budget) out of largely recycled materials in 1675.
  4. The Royal Observatory is built on the old site of Greenwich Castle which was often used as a hunting lodge by Henry VIII.
  5. The Royal Observatory was commissioned by King Charles II to study the moon and stars with hope to produce maps and guides that would lead to perfect navigation at sea.
  6. At the Observatory, you can cross the prime meridian line - it is from this point that all time is measured.
  7. The original observatory at first housed the scientific instruments to be used by Flamsteed in his work on stellar tables, and over time also incorporated a number of additional responsibilities such as marking the official time of day.
  8. British astronomers have long used the Royal Observatory as a basis for measurement - four separate meridians have been drawn through the building.
  9. It displays the mid-20th-century Russian-made FM Fedchenko clock (the most accurate pendulum clock ever built in multiple copies).
  10. A visit allows you to see John Harrison’s world-changing timekeepers, travel the universe in London’s only planetarium and touch a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid.

The information here has been provided by Homebase, which has awarded the Royal Observatory one of its Mossy Memory green plaques that help to highlight Britain’s heritage for green spaces and the great outdoors.

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The observatory was selected with the clocks changing this weekend for being “a location so synonymous with time” and as one of the “most iconic outdoor spaces in the UK”.

Alnwick Castle, Sherwood Forest, Hay Wain and Kensington Gardens have previously been chosen for one of the plaques.

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