CHAPTER V
THE OBSERVATORY BUILDINGS
Like a living organism, Greenwich Observatory bears the record of its life-history in its structure. It was not one of those favoured institutions that have sprung complete and fully equipped from the liberality of some great king or private millionaire. As we have seen, it was originally established on the most modest—not to say meagre—scale, and has been enlarged just as it has been absolutely necessary. To quote again from Professor Newcomb—
'Whenever any part of it was found insufficient for its purpose, new rooms were built for the special object in view, and thus it has been growing from the beginning by a process as natural and simple as that of the growth of a tree. Even now the very value of its structure is less than that of several other public observatories, though it eclipses them all in the results of its work.'
Entering the courtyard—an enclosure some eighty feet deep by ninety feet in extreme breadth—by the great gate, we see before us Flamsteed House, the original building of the Observatory. Flamsteed's little domain was only some twenty-seven yards wide by fifty deep, and for buildings comprised little beyond a small dwelling-house on the ground floor, and one fine room above it. This room—the original Greenwich Observatory—still remains, and is used as a council room by the official Board of Visitors, who come down to the Observatory on the first Saturday in June, to examine into its condition and to receive the Astronomer Royal's report. The room is called, from its shape, the Octagon Room, and is well known to Londoners from the great north window which looks out straight over the river between the twin domes of the Hospital.
In Bradley's time, about 1749, the first extension of the domains of the Observatory took place to the south and east of the original building, the direction in which, on the whole, all subsequent extensions have taken place, owing to the fact that the original building was constructed at the extremity of what Sir George Airy was accustomed to call a 'peninsula'—a projecting spur of the Blackheath plateau, from which the ground falls away very sharply on three sides and on part of the fourth.
The Observatory domain at present is fully two hundred yards in greatest length, with an average breadth of about sixty. Nearly the whole of this accession took place under the directorates of Pond and Airy. The present instruments are, therefore, as a rule, the more modern in direct proportion to their distance from the Octagon Room—the old original Observatory. There is one notable exception. The very first extension of the Observatory buildings, made in the time of Halley, the second Astronomer Royal, consisted in the setting up of a strong pier, to carry two quadrant telescopes. The pier still remains, but now forms the base of the support of the twin telescopes devoted to the photographic survey of the heavens for the International Chart.
Standing just within the gate of the courtyard, and looking westward, that is toward Flamsteed House, we have immediately on our right hand the porter's lodge; a little farther forward, also on the right, the Transit Pavilion, a small building sheltering a portable transit instrument; and farther forward, still on the right, the entrance to the Chronograph Room. Above the Chronograph Room is a little, inconveniently-placed dome, containing a small equatorially-mounted telescope, known as the Shuckburgh. Beyond the Chronograph Room a door opens on to the North Terrace, over which is seen the great north window of the Octagon Room. Close by the door of the Chronograph Room a great wooden staircase rises to the roof of the main building. It is not an attractive-looking ascent, as the steps overlap inconveniently. Still, there is no record of an accident upon them, and those who venture on the climb to the roof, where are placed the anemometers and the turret carrying the time-ball, which is dropped daily at 1 p.m., will be well repaid by the splendid view of the river which is there afforded to them.
Passing under this staircase, on the wall by its side is seen the following inscription:—
Carolus IIs Rex Optimus
Astronomiæ et Nauticæ artis
Patronus Maximus
Speculam hanc in utriusque commodum
fecit
Anno DNI MDCLXXVI. Regni sui XXVIII.