Chapel of St Peter and St Paul
Why is it significant?
Step through the doors under the eastern dome and the temperature of the place changes: after the Baroque thunder of the Painted Hall, here everything is cool and delicate, pale blue and cream and gold, with plasterwork as fine as the icing on a wedding cake.
Key Facts
| Place | Chapel of St Peter and St Paul |
|---|---|
| Address | King William Walk, London SE10 9NN, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.48300, -0.00410 |
| Part of Walk | Under the Thames to Longitude Zero: Maritime Greenwich, London |
| Generated | Generated |
Step through the doors under the eastern dome and the temperature of the place changes: after the Baroque thunder of the Painted Hall, here everything is cool and delicate, pale blue and cream and gold, with plasterwork as fine as the icing on a wedding cake.
The two domes look like twins, and they were meant to. Wren split the hospital into two halves to keep the view from the Queen's House open to the river, so the chapel on this side answers the hall on that one. But the interior you see is not Wren's. In January 1779 a fire gutted the original chapel, and the rebuilding fell to the architect James Stuart, nicknamed Athenian Stuart because he had measured the ruins of ancient Athens, working with William Newton. The new chapel was finished in 1789, and it is one of the finest Georgian Neoclassical interiors in Britain.
Look above the altar at the enormous painting by Benjamin West, the American-born artist who rose to become President of the Royal Academy. It shows Saint Paul after his shipwreck on Malta, calmly shaking a viper from his hand into the fire. A shipwreck and a survival: the perfect sermon in paint for a congregation of sailors. Up in the gallery, the organ by Samuel Green belongs to the same rebuilding.
Picture the men who once filled these pews. Old seamen in blue coats and three-cornered hats, many missing a leg, an arm or an eye, some of them veterans of the great sea battles against France. At its height the hospital was home to more than two thousand of them, the Greenwich pensioners, and Sunday service here was the fixed point of their week.
Weddings, concerts and services still take place under this ceiling, and the acoustics make even a single voice sound like a choir. When you come out, walk down to the river and follow the Thames path east, past the college railings, to an old tavern with tall bow windows hanging over the water.