Information Design Conference 2007 Greenwich, London, 28 and 30 March 2007
IDA home IDC 2007 home Background to IDC 2007 Who’s who and contact information Conference programme Conference reports Greenwich map Some local history

Yours to download: a short and colourful history
of Greenwich and the Thames

IDC 2007 is being held in an area of London, ‘Maritime Greenwich’ which is recognised as a World Heritage Site, encompassing the old Royal Naval Hospital buildings designed by Christopher Wren, the Queen’s House designed by Inigo Jones, The Royal Observatory, the Greenwich Meridian, St Alfege’s Church and many other places of great historical interest.

London was one of the world’s great seaports until the 1960s, and the influences of maritime trade and naval defence profoundly influenced social and historical development on both banks of the River Thames — from Greenwich all the way up to London Bridge, once London’s only bridge and the furthest point that ships could sail up river.

Conrad Taylor

To amuse and inform people attending IDC 2007, our conference secretary Conrad Taylor (who lives on the southern bank of the Thames, at Rotherhithe) has written a twelve-page illustrated history, Down the Thames and down the ages, which is available for download from the link below as a PDF document.

Tracing the development of Thames-side development in what is now East and South-east London from Saxon times, Conrad describes in particular the royal palaces at Greenwich in Tudor and Stuart times, the importance of the royal naval docks at Deptford, and the scientific initiatives of the Restoration which eventually put Greenwich not only ‘on the map’, but also defining its prime meridian.

Read how maritime trade influenced the growth of Wapping, Ratcliff and Limehouse; how dockside industries gave rise to the textile district of Spitalfields and the slums of the East End. Learn about how London’s first multiracial communities grew in the 1800s as Lascar and Chinese seamen, Black ex-soldiers, Huguenot and Jewish refugees and Bangladeshi immigrants added their cultures and influences to the East End.

You’ll meet Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare, Pocahontas and Sir Francis Drake, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Christopher Wren and Grinling Gibbons, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Bazalgette, Tsar Peter the Great and Henry VIII, Captain Kidd and Jack the Ripper, the Bishop of Winchester’s prostitutes and the homicidal gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray.

Download this entertaining pamphlet as PDF – 1000kb.