Old Royal Naval College - Greenwich Hospital

Greenwich Hospital was founded in 1694 as the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich. It was established as a residential home for injured sailors, on the model of Les Invalides and the Chelsea Hospital. The pensioned sailors wore blue uniforms not unlike the red ones of the Chelsea pensioners. It occupied its riverside site for over 170 years, closing to pensioners in 1869.

In 1730 the Crown gave the impounded Derwentwater estates in Northumberland and Cumberland to the Greenwich Hospital Trustees, along with the lead mining rights on the moors. In 1778, the Greenwich Hospital built Lowbyer Manor as a coaching inn, known until 1858c as The Anchor Inn to acknowledge the association with the Hospital.

The founding Greenwich Hospital charity still exists; though no longer based at the site. It is a Royal Charity for the benefit of seafarers and their dependents, with the Secretary of State for Defence acting as the Crown's sole trustee. The charity now funds sheltered housing for former Royal Navy personnel and the school it spawned, the Royal Hospital School, now at Holbrook in Suffolk. The charity remains the ground landlord of the area between Romney Road and the river, and receives annual rent for the site from the Greenwich Foundation. However, under the terms of the National Maritime Museum Acts 1934 and 1989, the former buildings of the Royal Hospital School and the Queen's House are vested in the National Maritime Museum for as long as they are required for museum purposes.

On 5 January 1806, Lord Nelson's body lay in state in the Painted Hall of the Greenwich Hospital before being taken up the river Thames to St Paul's Cathedral for a state funeral.

The remains of thousands of sailors and officers, including those who fought in the Battle of Trafalgar, were removed from the hospital site in 1875 and reinterred in East Greenwich Pleasaunce or "Pleasaunce Park" (named after the former Royal Palace of Placentia on the site of the hospital).