Prime Time at Greenwich

Tony Aldous on the changes afoot for a historic area of south London in Millennium Year and beyond.

Greenwich, with its Prime Meridian and its Millennium Dome, is the focus of world attention as never before. At the moment eyes are mostly on the Dome, which is not in Greenwich proper but on former gasworks land a mile downriver. That is where most of the money has been spent, and where the Queen and other VIPS will be on New Year's Eve.

But what of that other, older Greenwich - historic, royal Greenwich, with its ensemble of grand buildings, its royal park and old observatory, its Georgian town centre, Hawksmoor's St Alfege Church, and the masts of the Cutty Sark tea clipper rising over its rooftops? There, too, great changes are under way which may be every bit as far- reaching as those happening in and round the Dome.

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