Royal Observatory site and buildings

The buildings and site of the Royal Observatory evolved to meet the changing needs of the working Observatory. While Wren and Hooke's original buildings – consisting of the Astronomer Royal's residence, Great Star Room (or Octagon Room) and Summer Houses, now collectively known as Flamsteed House – were built ‘for the Observator's habitation & a little for Pompe’, they also housed clocks and portable instruments. Beyond this there was, from the earliest days, a meridian observatory in the rear courtyard that contained a succession of instruments, including the one that was to become most important to Flamsteed, a mural arc. Other buildings erected on the site by successive Astronomers Royal, especially to the east and south, were, like this single-storey observatory, aligned north–south and dedicated to providing stability for increasingly large and accurate meridian instruments.Footnote ⁹ The most radical transformations took place in the nineteenth century, with the arrival of large equatorial and altazimuth telescopes that required domes and an unobstructed view. These appeared over the old meridian rooms and, in 1857, on top of a new building that supported George Biddell Airy's Great Equatorial. By and large the form of these buildings was dictated by that of the instruments that they housed, although more remains to be said about the relationship between these, and other, observatory buildings and the people who lived and worked within them.Footnote ¹⁰

Two other elements are crucial in considering the development of the buildings at Greenwich. First, there was the question of cost. Paid for since 1675 by the Board of Ordnance and, from 1818, the Admiralty, all projected works had to be approved and built by government departments. Such works, therefore, had to be carefully justified, with the foundation's utilitarian basis kept in mind, and, especially in periods of economic depression such as the 1890s, at least appear to be planned to meet their purpose as cheaply as efficiency would allow. Second, there was the constraint created by the shape of the Observatory's site. Atop a hill, the ROG is bordered by steep slopes to the north and west and a public highway to the east.Footnote ¹¹ The only option for significant expansion was to the south. By the early nineteenth century the Observatory had begun to encroach on this ‘South Ground’ with the arrival of a wooden building, within and around which an additional programme of magnetic and meteorological observations was commenced. However, much of the available space was narrow, or the ground level uneven, and expansions into the land of Greenwich Park had to be negotiated and settled with a Royal Warrant. By the mid- to late nineteenth century it was a crowded site that had grown piecemeal to meet new needs as they arose. As the American astronomer Simon Newcomb put it,

It would be misleading to consider only the important working instruments when thinking about the growth of the Observatory's structures. Small instruments, instruments not currently in use, records and publications all needed to be stored and the Observatory's workers needed space to work, eat and sleep. Thus rooms or separate structures that housed portable instruments, the chronometers that the Admiralty sent to the Observatory for testing, books and manuscripts, offices and bedrooms, equipment for carpenters and gardeners, and so on, all appeared on the increasingly crowded site. The pressure on space was increased by, on the one hand, the length of time that the Observatory had been in existence – meaning that old instruments and records had accumulated – and, on the other, an expanding remit that took in the magnetic and meteorological observations, the new kinds of astronomy allowed by photography and spectroscopy, and increasing demands from the Admiralty, all of which required additional instruments, stores and, perhaps especially, people. Early in the century the staff had consisted of six assistants, with a fluctuating number of human computers; in 1888 there were eight assistants, superintending fifteen computers, and by the end of the century there was a total staff of about fifty. While the completed Physical Observatory certainly included design elements dictated by the use of instruments – providing protection, visibility and stability – they were far from being the only elements considered and, indeed, were only discussed relatively late in the process of planning.

The nineteenth-century development of the ROG remit

The completed cruciform building of the New Physical Observatory, opened in 1899, appears to be a carefully contrived solution to the problems regarding space and the increased amount and range of work being done at the ROG. It consolidated a number of existing temporary buildings with what had been a separate low-level dome for a group of equatorially mounted telescopes.Footnote ¹³ However, examination of the history of its planning, design and building shows that things were not quite so simple. As well as the constraints mentioned above, this is a story of changing goalposts regarding the position and role of a national observatory in the late nineteenth century. Thus, while it appears that the development of astronomical physics, particularly the application of photography and spectroscopy, were central to the decision to build a substantial new structure in the south of the Observatory's grounds, this is not where Christie began. The extent to which he seems to have responded to necessity and to opportunity as it arose, and to the suggestions of the architect, William Crisp, a civil engineer of the Admiralty's Works’ Department, is notable. The changing demands of work at the Observatory became manifest quickly enough to catch people – including the money men at the Admiralty – unprepared.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, while Airy was still Astronomer Royal, undertaking the new kinds of astronomy at Greenwich began to be considered. It would take the duties of staff beyond their timekeeping and star-mapping routine, based on meridian astronomy, and towards the kind of work that had traditionally been done by amateurs, who were free from the need to make a case for public funding on the basis of utility. Nevertheless, such work was increasingly finding a place in other private and national observatories and questions were asked about Greenwich's ability to compete.Footnote ¹⁴ Airy's view was that it should not attempt to compete, but remain focused on work useful to its patron and where it had established its international reputation. As he explained in his reports to the Observatory's Board of Visitors, ‘the first and necessary duties of the Observatory’ remained those by which astronomy aided navigation.Footnote ¹⁵ Recently additional work had, indeed, been undertaken. Some of this related, he said, to navigation alone: observations of changes in the Earth's magnetic field; work on magnetic disturbance caused by ships’ hulls; ‘the incessant attention to chronometers; the extensive dissemination of accurate time-signals; and the daily dropping of a time-ball at Deal’. Other new work was purely astronomical in nature, in particular photography and spectroscopy but also observation of double stars, nebulae, planets and sunspots.Footnote ¹⁶ This move reflected the possibilities opened up by new instruments and techniques, and the interests of astronomers, but also, notably, a new ‘public interest’ in the ‘less severely definite’ departments of astronomy.Footnote ¹⁷

Airy always reported on these matters cagily, pointing out repeatedly that such work was not within the strict interpretation of the ROG's remit. He had stated that the Board of Visitors ‘should judge’ whether this kind of observing should be added to the workload and budget, warning, ‘The character of the Observatory would be somewhat changed by this innovation … It would become, pro tanto, a physical Observatory’.Footnote ¹⁸ However, as Airy noted, they had in one respect long been a physical observatory, ‘by virtue of [the ROG's] Magnetical and Meteorological Department’. Because of their proficiency in this area, he suggested, the Greenwich observations ‘remove all necessity of subvention by the Government to any other magnetical or meteorological observatory in this part of Britain’.Footnote ¹⁹ This was a reference to institutions like Kew Observatory and the Meteorological Office, which Airy criticized because of the unnecessary public cost of apparently duplicated work, and recent calls for the founding of a new, government-funded observatory that would focus on the physics of astronomy.Footnote ²⁰

The discussions about a possible new physical observatory centred around Norman Lockyer, who had made his name through his work in solar physics. They took place within the Royal Astronomical Society, the discussions of the Devonshire Commission – the Royal Commission that investigated scientific education and science funding in 1870–1875 – and the pages of the scientific press.Footnote ²¹ In 1872, one of Lockyer's key allies, Alexander Strange, presented a paper on ‘The insufficiency of existing national observatories’, which pressed the case that Greenwich was not only too small but, as an institution based on the mathematical theories of positional astronomy, fundamentally unsuitable to ‘contribute systematically to the advancement of the new branch of astronomy’.Footnote ²² The Council of the RAS was polarized over the matter, some out of respect for Airy or dislike of Lockyer's tendency towards self-promotion. There were, however, also explicit concerns expressed about the possibility of Britain falling, or having already fallen, behind other nations, particularly those with large research institutions like Germany.

In opposing calls for government funding of scientific research Airy was undoubtedly anxious about competing calls on the small funds available and concerned for the premier position of Greenwich. However, he had a clear and consistent view regarding what should and should not be funded. Research or series of observations that had no proven efficacy or utility were outside this remit. His belief was that ‘the Observatory is not the place for new physical investigations’ but that, if time and funding were available, it was ‘well adapted for following out any which, originating with private investigators, have been reduced to laws susceptible of verification by daily observation’.Footnote ²³ Indeed, ‘Observations which demand larger telescopes, and especially observations which must be carried on in continual routine and with considerable expense, can only be maintained at a public observatory’.Footnote ²⁴ When the Photographic and Spectroscopic Department arrived at the Observatory in 1873 it took on Warren De la Rue's programme of daily solar photography from Kew and adopted the use of spectroscopy for measuring the motion of stars, as developed by William Huggins. These programmes, although under constant threat of termination, could clearly be linked to existing work in meteorology or astrometry and partially undercut calls for a new national observatory. Airy was adamant that ‘Government ought to assist science only when it is partially established’, not new and speculative research.Footnote ²⁵

In Airy's view it was for the good of science to limit the demands it made on government:

He was behind the times, and increasingly so. Men of science were asking for more because they understood that the likelihood of their receiving it was greater than it had been in the past, or at least that the principle of their receiving it was more generally accepted.Footnote ²⁷ Airy, however, continued to argue for a retrenchment in the activities of the ROG. In 1880 he believed that the three departments of work that the Observatory was then engaged with – positional astronomy/time determination, meteorological and magnetic observations, and photographic and spectroscopic astronomy – were bordering on excessive. Although ‘[a]ll these departments appear at present to be working efficiently and well’, he could ‘easily imagine circumstances which would interfere materially with the successful continuation, in one place, of this triplicate series of observations’.Footnote ²⁸ In his final report, Airy delivered a warning:

He was of the view that a publicly funded ‘Physical Observatory’, as ‘an institution for pure science’, was a dangerous venture: ‘without foundation on and continued connexion with a utilitarian object it will become disreputable’.Footnote ³⁰ Rather, even more emphasis should be placed on ‘the observatory-operations bearing on chronometric navigation’, for example aiding the Merchant Navy through an expanded galvanic time signal network.Footnote ³¹

Despite Airy's wariness, however, when Christie was promoted from chief assistant to Astronomer Royal in 1881 he led an institution that was engaged in work that was not directly utilitarian in nature. While Airy had sought to divide astronomy into areas that government should and should not fund, ensuring that such funds as did exist continued to support the core work of the ROG, Christie was to seek to expand the definitions of the Observatory's remit to match the calls for an expansion of publicly funded science. It was clear that the Board of Visitors supported and encouraged this development and, indeed, that at times they dictated it: Airy stated in 1880 that ‘Photographic and Spectroscopic astronomy [had been] established at the instance of the Board of Visitors’ rather than by his own initiative.Footnote ³² It was also evident that the Admiralty was prepared to provide funds, where a case was well – or repeatedly – made. There seems to have been an assumption that the ROG would continue to engage in such work and that Christie would support its further development. While maintaining a sense of the Observatory's chief duties, Christie had a broader understanding than his predecessor of what the ROG could encompass. This difference in approach is perhaps evidenced by Airy's inclusion in his reports, from 1855 until his retirement, of a section headed ‘Extraneous work’, which Christie immediately removed. However, as will be made clear below, interpretations of the ROG's original purpose were always kept in mind and were carefully used to justify demands for expansion made to the Admiralty. By looking closely at the building of the Physical Observatory, we can see the new expectations of astronomers – meaning especially Christie and the Board of Visitors – coming into contact with the Admiralty and other branches of government in a period when the provision of state funding for science was increasingly accepted.

In contrast to Airy's repeated suggestions that one or other of the ROG departments might have to be discontinued, the very first of the ‘General remarks’ that Christie made in his first report to the Board of Visitors in 1882 suggested that ‘extension of the work of the Observatory, such as the progress of science may render desirable’, would early be under consideration. Focusing first on manpower, Christie highlighted how stretched they were and, again in contrast to Airy's view that fulfilling the expectations of astronomers and the public might jeopardize their fundamental meridian observations, stressed that ‘the Observatory can hardly maintain its position as a national institution if it gives no attention to objects which from time to time excite the interest of the astronomical world’.Footnote ³³ The minutes of the meetings of the Board of Visitors demonstrate that many of the changes introduced in the 1880s and 1890s were at Christie's suggestion.Footnote ³⁴ They were, however, enthusiastically endorsed by a Board that seems to have been frustrated by Airy's attitude.Footnote ³⁵ It seems likely that on Airy's retirement the majority of the Visitors, especially De la Rue and Huggins, were hoping for a commitment to continuing astrophysical work at the Observatory. Christie was known to have an interest in such areas and his eventual choice as Airy's successor almost automatically opened the ROG to change in this direction.Footnote ³⁶

Suggestions that Christie put forward in his annual reports were, apparently readily, taken up by the Board of Visitors, who recommended them to the Admiralty. They seem, in particular, to have been impressed by Christie's comments on the amount of work engulfing the ROG and the need for additional staff, additional space and better means of supervision. This was despite the fact that these problems were caused by the decision to engage in more types of astronomy, using a larger number of instruments.Footnote ³⁷ Many of these additions were unplanned, but they were also responsive to a sense of the ROG's position relative to other, and especially foreign, observatories, a clear example being the appeal to national standing in the question of joining the international Carte du ciel project.Footnote ³⁸ Christie – and the Board of Visitors – had an eye on the public perception of the ROG, and he claimed that the ‘increased demands made on the Observatory in recent years both by the scientific and the general public’ led inevitably to a ‘development of work’ that necessitated the hiring of additional staff.Footnote ³⁹ The expectations of both these publics were, of course, coloured by their knowledge of what was done in other observatories and by the astronomical discoveries that received wide media coverage.Footnote ⁴⁰ There was a sense of competition with grand institutions founded to showcase the most advanced instruments and private observatories exploring the use of spectroscopy and photography, or based around ever-larger telescopes that could explore surface details of other planets or the nature of nebulae. The number of observatories in existence worldwide had increased enormously over the course of the nineteenth century, with those newly founded in the United States of America able to jump straight into use of the new astronomical techniques. There, even the utilitarian Greenwich equivalent, the US Naval Observatory, briefly held the largest telescope in the world and was able to add to the tally of newly observed celestial objects.Footnote ⁴¹ Such things not only excited the imaginations of the wider public and potential funders; they also attracted the interest of astronomers, giving a sense of adding to new research rather than simply keeping account of the heavens.

While Airy felt that the public would be more satisfied by a utilitarian institution that demonstrably provided services in return for their money, Christie was clearly more sympathetic to the view that the public expected facilities that would explore the most modern kinds of astronomy and perhaps even allow discoveries of the kind that the Observatory so spectacularly – though understandably – missed in the case of Neptune in 1846.Footnote ⁴² When the ROG was reported on by a representative of the US Navy in an appendix to the Washington Observations, their conclusions would have made Airy proud but would perhaps have strengthened Christie's resolve to change the programme:

The technical ability to make more and increasingly accurate observations generated an ever-increasing amount of paperwork and publishable data. This in itself, with or without a change in policy, put pressure on staff, space and finance. Airy had warned that ‘the increase of facilities for making observations’ would produce more observations than could be reduced and made useful. This might eventually, he said, mean that fewer observers but more computers would have to be employed.Footnote ⁴⁴ Five years later, he highlighted the fact that every ‘novelty in the Observatory increases the amount of printing; and our annual volume now contains very nearly one thousand large and closely-printed pages’, while that of the Paris Observatory had around four hundred.Footnote ⁴⁵ This increase continued: the London News reported in 1896 that while a ‘few years ago’ two to three thousand transit circle observations ‘was a very good year's work’, the ROG was now making 10,000 to 12,000, plus ever-increasing work in the other departments: ‘the whole business of the observatory has more than doubled within the past few years’.Footnote ⁴⁶ For Airy these facts tended to add to his call for a scaling down of the Observatory's work outside its original ‘astronomy and navigation’ role. As we will see, however, for Christie they were used as justifications for his expansion of budget, workforce and site.

Christie had argued, from the beginning of his tenure as Astronomer Royal, that the existing staff was inadequate to deal with the work that the ROG was required and expected to do both to meet its historical utilitarian purpose and to ‘maintain the character of the Observatory as a scientific institution’ by adopting the new astronomical techniques.Footnote ⁴⁷ The number of junior staff rose slowly, but by the 1890s Christie was demanding that the number of senior and supervisory staff should also be increased and that there should be more permanency among employees. Traditionally computers had been boys employed on a temporary basis who subsequently left to find more regular clerical work.Footnote ⁴⁸ Since the 1850s, though, many had been taught to use the telescopes as well as to do calculations and Christie felt that it was a waste of talent and skills if the best were not given the opportunity to work towards better pay and a permanent position.Footnote ⁴⁹ By the time Christie retired, there were about sixty members of staff, including two chief assistants (instead of one), six assistants, one clerical assistant, eleven established (i.e. permanent) computers and twenty-five temporary staff, sixteen of whom were qualified as observers. Other staff included carpenters, labourers, mechanics, porters and so on. Costs of salaries, wages and allowances at the ROG increased from £5,276 for the 1880–1881 year to £6,358 in 1889–1890 and £7,727 for 1899–1900.Footnote ⁵⁰ This was a significant change in a short period of time, although Christie still felt that the ‘employment in an Astronomical Observatory of a temporary staff of boys so large relative to the permanent staff is open to grave objection’.Footnote ⁵¹

The staff at the Observatory were among a very few government-funded career scientists in this period. Christie was far more enthusiastic than Airy had been about his senior staff keeping abreast of new ideas and taking an interest in the wider field, as well as rewarding them with pay and autonomy. Christie, according to one source, ‘felt strongly that the great national Observatory must give the fullest scope for research work, if it were to maintain its prestige and to attract astronomers of intellectual eminence on to its Staff’, and that ‘erecting new buildings and acquiring new instruments’ was the means to do this.Footnote ⁵² This was also one of the advantages of the Greenwich site. It was close enough to London to allow not only Christie but also other members of staff to be intimately involved with the development of their disciplines through active roles within the Royal Society, Royal Astronomical Society and British Astronomical Association. This undoubtedly could be seen as underlining the importance of the ROG within the scientific world, increasing its reputation in both professional and amateur astronomical contexts.Footnote ⁵³ It also, by allowing involvement with key societies and opportunities for speaking to and publishing for a range of audiences, ensured that the ROG was an attractive place for the best astronomers and mathematicians to make their careers. For Christie, increasing the Observatory's national and international prestige required an excellent, active and large staff as well as sufficiently impressive buildings.

When, eventually, the majority of Christie's building works had been completed and staffing plans implemented, the view from some quarters was that the ROG had finally caught up with the times. A headline in the New York Times article in 1896 read, ‘Improvements That Will Bring an Observatory, Already the Most Important in the World, up to a Degree of Excellence Reached Long Ago at Several Much More Modest Stations of Observation – New Buildings and Officials’.Footnote ⁵⁴ This article quoted from another in the London News, which expressed the opinion that the ‘expansion of science during the past generation has been amazing, and the old observatory premises have long been becoming every year more and more hopelessly inadequate to the work that has somehow had to be carried on in it’. The report went on, ‘several new departments have of necessity been added to the observatory, while the old premises and many of the old instruments have fallen quite behind the times’, and ‘advances and development of science and the increased demands upon the resources of the observatory have rendered increased accommodation absolutely indispensable’. For this reporter, the government was insufficiently generous:

The New Physical Observatory

The expansion of the Observatory's paperwork, library, archive and range of observations Airy dealt with by requesting the building of a New Library. This idea was raised in 1878, when Airy remarked on the ‘approaching necessity’ for a galleried building of about fifty by twenty feet. However, it proved to be difficult to get the Admiralty to agree to pay for it, and it was rejected from the Navy Estimates for two years running. This meant that it was not, in fact, complete until Christie's tenure began. Airy claimed,

This suggests that from within the Board of Visitors – the views of which had led to the arrival of the Great Equatorial telescope, the development of the Magnetic and Meteorological Department and the arrival of the Spectrographic and Photographic Department – the notion of moving to a new, larger, more suitable site had been raised. It was something that both Airy and Christie resisted, and to which the New Physical Observatory was a partial answer. The Board had evidently also complained about the appearance of the Observatory's site, particularly the wooden huts and sheds that supplemented the main buildings. Once the ground had been cleared in preparation for the New Library, Airy wrote in his report, ‘I am confident that the Visitors will recognize that the state and general appearance of the Observatory Grounds are much improved’.Footnote ⁵⁷ The theme of the appearance of the buildings and site, and its inadequacy for an institution of national or international importance, were to be important for the conception and execution of the New Physical Laboratory.

Christie's tenure thus began with the building of the New Library, the completion of which was included in his first report to the Board of Visitors.Footnote ⁵⁸ The following year new works were already projected, this time because – as Airy had anticipated – of the arrival of a large equatorial instrument.Footnote ⁵⁹ While William Lassell's twenty-foot reflecting telescope was a gift, its acceptance implied significant investment. It required expenditure of £700, for a thirty-foot, low-level dome and, beyond this, its use inevitably required an additional workload for observers and computers.Footnote ⁶⁰ The building was completed in 1884, a year that saw the total stock of instruments at the ROG increase with the return of all the instruments that had been used in the 1874 and 1882 transit of Venus expeditions. By the following year there were discussions about providing a larger equatorial to replace Airy's 12.8-inch Merz Great Equatorial, which in turn led to building work on the south-east dome. In 1888 building work was undertaken that extended the existing Computing Rooms and provided sinks and a darkroom for photography as well as a new eighteen-foot dome to house a six-inch refracting telescope with a photoheliograph. This work, Christie reported, was a ‘great convenience’ as ‘the whole of the astronomical establishment is now brought together’.Footnote ⁶¹ There was a clear change of direction in the aims and management of the ROG. Much of this evidently came from Christie himself, within a changing atmosphere in terms of what both the Board of Visitors and the Admiralty – and beyond them, the government and the voting public – were prepared to pay for. However, there is little evidence that either Christie or members of the Board of Visitors had any clear plan for future development. The additions seem often to have been ad hoc, responsive to changes as they appeared, opportunities when they arose and gifts when they were offered.

Thus in 1889, when Christie suggested the building of a new, permanent structure in the south ground of the Observatory, it was to be a one-storey brick building, forty by thirty feet, connecting with the low-rise Lassell Dome. It was to serve as ‘an Observatory museum for instruments of scientific value or historical interest’, for, ‘Owing to want of Space in the Observatory buildings the moveable instruments, clocks and other apparatus which are not in actual use, are for the most part stowed away in their boxes in wooden sheds’, which made their examination and care difficult.Footnote ⁶² This having been agreed by the Board of Visitors in June, Christie wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty in August to request the building of an Observatory museum. He noted in addition that the wooden sheds were not sufficiently secure and that this accumulation of instruments was largely contributed to by the purchases made for the transit of Venus expeditions in 1874. Further, he declared that the building ‘would not require removal of any sheds’ and that those which previously housed the moveable instruments would be freed up for other purposes.Footnote ⁶³ Days after this letter was sent, Christie visited Pulkovo, Imperial Russia's showpiece astrophysical observatory. What he saw there may have significantly changed his ambitions, although these had to be contained within what he could wrest from the Admiralty. While Pulkovo was built in the 1830s as a the epitome of an observatory for positional astronomy, and was not a model for a future astrophysical observatory, the splendour and coherence of its buildings may well have influenced Christie's thinking about what a national observatory should project to peers, rivals and the public.Footnote ⁶⁴

The Admiralty authorized expenditure for the new building and William Crisp, of the Director of Works’ Department, began discussions with Christie regarding location and design. The tightness of the site proved an immediate problem and may have prompted Crisp to consider a rectangular building with a smaller footprint but of more than one storey. In April 1890 Christie wrote to say that Crisp need not limit the height ‘if you think it would improve its appearance to have it a floor or two higher’. The plan now also included the removal of some smaller structures in the Observatory grounds.Footnote ⁶⁵ Shortly after this Christie recorded that he had proposed a plan with an octagonal central portion.Footnote ⁶⁶ His ideas were clearly now some way beyond his original proposition, and Crisp warily advised, in a letter marked ‘Private’, ‘It is very desirable that you should call (spontaneously) to explain your views on [the] proposed new Buildings to the Director [of Works]’.Footnote ⁶⁷ To the Board of Visitors in June 1890 Christie explained that the plan had, ‘After careful consideration’, been completely changed. The museum was now to become one of two wings placed to the east and west of the existing Lassell Dome, which would now be raised a storey. The other wing ‘would provide a suitable Computing Room for the Magnetic and Meteorological Branch, and sleeping accommodation for observers’.Footnote ⁶⁸ This was required because the current Magnetic Computing Room was too small for the seven members of staff who worked there. The other advantage of this scheme was that it would raise the height of the Lassell telescope, observations from which were partially obscured by trees. It is difficult to know if this was post hoc justification for Christie's new project, or if the problems with the position of the recently built dome were a serious flaw, only just identified.

For Christie, the other great advantage of his scheme, as he told the Hydrographer, Captain W.J. Wharton, was that as the east wing ‘the storehouse museum can be built at once independently of the rest of the scheme’, using money already approved by the Admiralty.Footnote ⁶⁹ However, by July 1890 Christie's ideas had become grander. In ‘semi-official’ correspondence with Crisp he proposed what he now called for the first time – in what must have been a very deliberate choice of name – the ‘Physical Observatory’. This was to have four two-storey wings and a central tower carrying the Lassell Dome. In the north wing he would house the Magnetic and Meteorological Branch, and in the west the Spectroscopic and Photoheliographic Branch, with bedrooms provided on the ground floor. The south wing was to be devoted to the Library (incidentally the equivalent location of the highly esteemed astronomical library at Pulkovo) while the east wing and most of the centre were to house the museum. This added space would relieve cramped accommodation elsewhere in the Observatory, and would ‘provide for growth in the future’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Again, Crisp proposed caution: ‘I foresee grave difficulties in carrying out the proposal to erect this museum as a wing of a structure not contemplated in the vote’. He suggested that, following ‘the line of least resistance’, they propose spending the money already provided simply on ‘the erection of an octagonal museum 2 floors high’. This scheme ‘lends itself to future addition – vertically and laterally – the dome might be raised first – the wings added one by one’.Footnote ⁷¹ Christie took this advice, and therefore presented this idea – an octagonal building that was ‘practically complete in itself’ but ‘so planned and placed as to form part of a larger scheme’.Footnote ⁷²

Christie left this rather vague, and said nothing here about when the larger building project might be contemplated. Rather, it was suggested that this was prudent foresight. However, the Director of Works, Henry Pilkington, who, according to Crisp, was ‘disposed to take an active interest in R.O. affairs’, ensured that a plan for a central portion to a future cruciform structure was provided.Footnote ⁷³ Christie admitted in his response of November 1890 that he hoped that the north and south wings would be provided for in the 1891–1892 financial year, although the east and west wings were still to be considered only ‘at a later date’, despite the fact that the undecorated central octagon would look distinctly odd standing alone.Footnote ⁷⁴ On 5 December that year he heard the news that he was to use as one of his principal arguments in getting the Admiralty to pay for the works. This was the announcement that the Admiralty wished the Royal Observatory to test a much greater number of chronometers and deck watches than it was already responsible for, doubling the accommodation needed. This, he claimed, meant that all four wings must proceed as soon as possible.Footnote ⁷⁵ While Christie believed that his larger scheme was in the spirit, if not the letter, of the Board of Visitors’ recommendation, he was firmly told by the Admiralty that it should be resubmitted for the following year, and that only the south wing, now built in order to ‘give room for increase of chronometers’, would be put forward.Footnote ⁷⁶

It is clear that by this date Christie had developed a grand vision of his Physical Observatory and its contents. The Department of Works provided a plan that showed this scheme superimposed over the confirmed central ‘Building for Moveable Instruments’ (Figure 2), although the Admiralty repeatedly resisted his pleas. ‘I feel strongly’, he wrote in November 1891, ‘that the complete cruciform building with 4 wings is what we require, though we may have to get it piecemeal’.Footnote ⁷⁷ In the process of explaining his aims to the Board of Visitors and justifying his claims to the Admiralty, his presentation of the Observatory's needs got somewhat neater, and further away from his original proposals. One strand of argument was that a coherent, permanent building was required for a national institution. In his report to the Board of Visitors in June 1891, he wrote of the ‘wooden sheds and huts which now disfigure the Observatory grounds’, suggesting that these were ‘quite out of place’; ‘The time would seem to have come when an effort should be made to provide the Royal Observatory with buildings befitting its position as a permanent institution’. Another line underscored the inadequacy of the existing accommodation. Christie continued to stress the increase in number of chronometers as an immediate factor that was out of his control, and added consideration of the ‘increasing staff’ and ‘accumulating material’ that accompanied the Observatory's widening remit.Footnote ⁷⁸ As well as being too cramped, the buildings and rooms used were a fire risk, too cold or within his official residence.

Figure 2.

1891 plan showing the proposed position of a four-winged Physical Observatory, with attic, main and basement storeys, overlying the Magnetic and Photograph Offices, photoheliograph hut, Lassell Dome and new Building for Moveable Instruments. The dotted arc indicates a proposed ‘give-and-take’ boundary with the Royal Park. Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, Cambridge University Library, RGO 7/50. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Another plan showed a building with three wings, as a possible option that lessened the need to encroach on new land.

Pilkington suggested that Christie get his funding at least for the completion of the central octagon and the building of the south wing ‘on the understanding that the wing for Chronometers is provided for’.Footnote ⁷⁹ Christie, however, continued to request the north wing as well. He had gained another argument for the speedy completion of the central portion, surmounted with the Lassell Dome, with the donation of a photoheliograph telescope by the physician and amateur astronomer Sir Henry Thompson.Footnote ⁸⁰ This was an important instrument and a generous gift, but its mounting in the low-level Lassell Dome meant that the trees ‘now greatly interfere with its effective use’. The presence of this instrument also contributed to ‘the recent great increase in the photographic work of the Observatory’, which meant that a laboratory was ‘urgently needed’.Footnote ⁸¹ Christie depicted very unsatisfactory working conditions for the staff, which he insisted required urgent remedy. He said the seven members of the Magnetic and Meteorological Branch currently ‘have to work in a small ante-room built of wood and altogether unfitted for the purpose’. In general, he said, ‘The increase of the Observatory staff in recent years has made it a matter of urgency that proper accommodation should be provided to enable the work of the Observatory to be carried on’. He said it was a matter of ‘extreme difficulty’ to find space for desks, and that the necessity of splitting staff between different rooms ‘interferes with effective supervision of the work, and causes much loss of time’. All this would only get worse as additional assistants were due to arrive the next year. He claimed that these two wings were so important that the delay would cause ‘serious injury to the efficiency of the Observatory’. It would, he declared, ‘be considered absolutely necessary by any competent person who examined the question on the spot’.Footnote ⁸² Despite this, early in 1892 the Lords Commissioners were ‘unable to concur’, meaning that the decision was deferred once more.Footnote ⁸³

Over the following years Christie continued to press his case, first for the north wing, then against a series of delays for building work and finally for the completion of the additional two wings. He stressed the need for proper care of the Observatory's property, as the ad hoc use of space in locations such as the library risked items being misplaced, and for proper supervision of the staff. When further work was again postponed in early 1893, Christie wrote a letter of righteous indignation repeating and enlarging previous arguments and suggesting that the Admiralty were seriously hampering the efficiency and threatening the accuracy of the Observatory's work.Footnote ⁸⁴ It seems unlikely that needs had got so very much more pressing in the three and a half years since the idea for a one-storey, rectangular building was first mooted. Christie clearly amplified his problems in order to gain his new building, although it remains unclear whether the combination of his opportunism and others’ demands increased his problems unnecessarily, or if he saw each as a means to his end. What is clear is that, in a reversal of Airy's policy, Christie never suggested that he ought to rein in the Observatory's expenditure, staff and range of work. It was understood that this was to be a national observatory – partaking of as much new work in astronomy as it could – rather than that defined by Airy's strict interpretation of the original Royal Warrant.

However, Christie did understand what Airy had achieved in terms of the effective running of the ROG with regard to its ‘astronomy and navigation’ brief. Hinting that Airy's administrative efforts might be undone, Christie made much of the threat to the ‘efficiency of the Observatory’. Explaining that the parts of the Physical Observatory that had been built now obscured much of the sky, he claimed that the continuation of the series of photographs of the sun, taken continuously at Greenwich since 1873, was at risk. ‘It would’, he said, ‘be a scandal if this valuable series were interrupted through the piecemeal contribution of the Physical Observatory’. Getting tough, he added that if the repositioning of the dome was not done immediately, ‘I regret to have to state that I must disclaim all responsibility for the result’. In addition to this he noted that the staff were currently working in unsuitable conditions: badly ventilated, cold and cramped. He had previously pointed out that he was forced to use a room in his own residence for computers, and now highlighted the inappropriate nature of this arrangement with the news that there was a case of scarlet fever in his house. His parting shot was to question the Admiralty's commitment: ‘I trust that their Lordships having shewn their readiness to provide accommodation for the Navy Chronometers will not be unwilling to consider the urgent requirements of the Observatory staff’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Christie's firm words got him the north wing in 1893, taking approved costs to £5,000, although building of even the south wing was slowed to a halt by delay in the supply of terracotta, by workforce disputes and by frost.

Late in 1894 Christie asked again for the east and west wings, which were to provide space for staff, records, calculations, publications and the library, to be added. He emphasized again the point about staff efficiency, but went a stage further, saying that ‘it is very desirable … that the Astronomer Royal and his staff should, as far as practicable, be concentrated in one building’.Footnote ⁸⁶ This was only an extension of Christie's ideas on supervision, but was picked up by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, who demanded an explanation, ‘as it was understood that the new building was intended to be a Physical Observatory’.Footnote ⁸⁷ The nature of a modern observatory was far from clear to the Admiralty, although Christie did keep moving the goalposts and his reply makes clear how far his ideas had come. He now saw this new building as ‘the centre of the activity of the observatory’. He explained what he meant by ‘physical observatory’:

He presented his full plans for the use of the space which now was less dictated by the four wings than by the different levels: the ground floor was for workshops, storage of instruments and the library; the first, or principal, floor was for the offices of the Astronomer Royal, his chief assistant and clerk and for the desk workers of all the Observatory's branches, except for the Time Department, plus a small museum in the central octagon; in the attic floor and pavilions there was to be further storage for publications, records and photographs, laboratory and darkrooms. The dome was to carry three telescopes, the Thompson twenty-six-inch now replacing the Lassell telescope.Footnote ⁸⁸ These plans were rejected again in 1895, and only approved the following year at an additional projected cost of £6,000, while in the meantime work on the other parts of the building was continuing only slowly and intermittently (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

The north wing and central portion of the New Physical Observatory in 1896. B1006, National Maritime Museum.

The whole building was only completed in 1899. Favourable comments were made and the Observatory had its centralized facility for the majority of its staff – a long way from the museum for portable instruments that was first suggested in 1889. The London News welcomed the fact that Greenwich Observatory was ‘no longer the chaotic cluster of old buildings just inside the walls’ but ‘a striking adornment to Greenwich Park’, a ‘handsome and very elaborately ornamented structure in red brick and brown terra cotta, surmounted by a central dome and embellished by allegorical designs, by a large bust of Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and by tablets displaying the names of leading astronomers’. This meant that ‘Greenwich Observatory will present an appearance somewhat more in keeping with its world-wide fame, and, what is more, will have in the new building an instrument which will rank among the very finest in existence’.Footnote ⁸⁹ New iron railings later replaced wooden fences, allowing passers-by to admire the building, and some, though not all, of the existing sheds and outbuildings were removed. Given that they were meant to have been replaced by this structure, it seems ironic that only six years later Christie reported to the Board of Visitors, ‘A permanent storehouse for portable instruments, huts, chronometer baskets, and general stores, is much needed to take the place of the existing wooden sheds’.Footnote ⁹⁰

Design and decoration

The foregoing story of somewhat haphazard planning, standing alongside a desire to present the public with a national observatory building, is also revealed in the Physical Observatory's form and decoration. While architecturally unexceptional, its eclectic mix of influences being typical of late nineteenth-century public buildings, it evinced a certain grandeur and formality, as be fitted a national institution.Footnote ⁹¹ Crisp, the architect, commented that as a ‘formal class of architecture [was] necessarily adopted for the R.O.’ it was inadvisable to (literally) cut corners in order to squeeze the building onto the site.Footnote ⁹² Although new to the Greenwich site, a winged structure with a central, often octagonal, tower was almost de rigueur for observatories by this period and it seems quite possible that Christie's thinking travelled in this direction quite naturally in response, even before he had quite decided what else would be put into the other one, two or three wings.Footnote ⁹³ Beyond this, however, Crisp seems to have been given a remarkably free hand. Christie appears to have been quite pleasantly surprised when, seeing drawings in 1893, he found that ‘the Physical Observatory when completed will, I think, be a handsome building which will greatly improve the appearance of the Observatory’.Footnote ⁹⁴

The terracotta decoration made it possible to include decorative as well as architectural elements in the design. Foliage, coats of arms, the bust, a decorative plaque, and twenty-four tablets above the first-floor windows, bearing a series of names linked to the history of astronomy with their dates among the foliage, were all eventually included (Figure 4). Such decoration was, of course, appropriate for such a building. At the new 1892–1896 building of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, the exterior of the library bore the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Herschel, Bessel and Henderson, the first Astronomer Royal for Scotland. At Pulkovo, the entrance hall contained portraits of a similar series of historical greats and more recent inspirations for highly accurate positional and stellar astronomy.Footnote ⁹⁵ Unlike at Edinburgh, the Greenwich list of names tells a very particular – and unusually practical rather than general – history of astronomy. As Christie wrote, ‘The idea is to present a sort of history of the Observatory from the beginning to the date of the building’.Footnote ⁹⁶ First, Christie's seven predecessors as Astronomer Royal were honoured in the most prominent positions at the ends of each wing and on the four ‘lobbies’ of the central tower. The eighth of these more prestigious spots was, naturally, given to Newton. The other sixteen names were of ‘persons specially connected with the advancement of the Royal Observatory as Astronomers, Instrument Makers, Clock and Chronometer Makers’.Footnote ⁹⁷ All working in England, they celebrate the Royal Observatory's identity as a pioneering institution for precision instruments and practical astronomy, and the world's prime location for the connection between timekeeping and astronomy.

Figure 4.

Decorative plaques on the South Building at the Royal Observatory Greenwich (F6911-60, L2154-039 National Maritime Museum). The art nouveau plaque depicting Astronomia was designed by W.J. Neatby, head of the architectural department of Doulton & Co.

With few exceptions, the names on this building were solidly linked to the ROG's traditional role, and that which was defended by Airy against the incursions of the new astronomy. Likewise, the structure carrying the dome is decorated with windows that remind the viewer of portholes while the weather vane depicts Henry VIII's flagship, Henri Grace à Dieu, or Great Harry. Airy's cry of ‘astronomy and navigation’ might be ringing in our ears. Decorating a building that was intended to symbolize Greenwich's attempt to join the pioneering work of other public and private observatories, this scheme appears as a tribute to the old and passing order, marking a transition to the new. However, it also emphatically underlined Greenwich's very long history as a state-funded institution, singling it out from the tsar's observatory in Pulkovo, university-based institutions or privately financed observatories like many of those springing up in America. While funding by the Admiralty limited the extent to which Greenwich could transform itself, it also meant permanence and continuity and a level of security that was envied by the directors of many other institutions.