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Antiques Roadshow Comes To Greenwich

September 24, 2009 By Rob Powell

The BBC’s Antiques Roadshow trundles into town next week and they are reminding people they can come along with their antiques to get them valued. The stalwart of the Sunday night TV schedules, now fronted by Fiona Bruce, will be at the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College on Thursday 1st October.

If you have an item you would like to have valued by the experts, just turn up between 9.30 am and 4.30 pm. If you just want to go along to be part of the audience, you can get there up until 7pm.

If you have items which are too big to carry along, you can contact the team in advance by emailing photos to antiques.roadshow@bbc.co.uk (the deadline is tomorrow, Friday 25th). They will then arrange to come and examine selected items before Thursday and help you get them to the show.

The Roadshow last visited the Naval College in 1998 when a book of Japanese prints bought in a junk shop turned out to be worth £3,500.

Filed Under: What's On Tagged With: Old Royal Naval College, What's On

Open House: Where Will You Go?

September 17, 2009 By Andrew Gilligan

LAST YEAR, attentive readers may remember, I wrote about the famous local places I’d embarrassingly never been (the Observatory, the Maritime Museum, Ranger’s House, etc) and the obscure local places I’d visited instead (Severndroog Castle, Eltham Palace, etc.)

I’m afraid I still haven’t made it to any more marquee-name sites (I did get to the Maritime Museum food court once – did you know they’ve got a branch of that nice French bakery, Paul, in there?) But this Saturday and Sunday, we are all being given that precious once-a-year chance to stock up on our “really obscure attractions” quota.

It’s called Open House London; it’s the one weekend when lots of fascinating places normally closed to the general public crack open the doors for a few hours; and this year Greenwich has a good stock.

Sure, you could go round some of those show-off towers in the City, or various wood-panelled enclaves in Westminster (TfL engineering works permitting) – but I think you should stay here.

Remember “Kiss me, Hardy?” That was Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, to you – the flag captain on HMS Victory at Trafalgar, who was with Nelson as he died – and this weekend you have the very rare opportunity to visit his grave. The remains of Hardy, and that other celebrated seadog Admiral Lord Hood, are in the neo-classical Devonport Mausoleum (1749) in the grounds of Devonport House, in the town centre, which is being opened up to visitors for four and a half hours on Sunday only (11- 3.30.) That’ll be first on my list.

My second stop will be at another almost-never-open, not-to-be-missed military attraction in Woolwich – the Station Officers’ Mess at the Royal Artillery Barracks. That is the vast slab of Georgian frontage you see when you drive over Woolwich Common, allegedly the longest in Europe – and also the first communal mess to be used by the Army. They’ll throw in the ruins of the old garrison church as well, bombed during World War II and left as a reminder.

It is particularly important to get all this done now, because Woolwich Barracks is of course shortly due to be messed about for that Olympic shooting event that no-one in the entire universe, not even the shooters themselves, actually wants. Tours on Sunday, on the hour from 10 till 3. Entry via Front Parade West Gate on Repository Road. Stand by your beds!

Then it will be on to Severndroog Castle, recently rescued by a National Lottery grant and subject of a previous column of mine. It’s a high tower standing at almost the highest point in London and on both Saturday and Sunday you can, very unusually, climb to the top (10am- 3pm, entry off Castle Wood, Shooters Hill).

It is annoying that all the hours are so limited – what is the occult appeal of a 3pm closing time? If you’re feeling a little bit monumented out and you want some later-than-mid-afternoon action, there is daring ultra-late-night opening (till 4.30pm) at the Greenwich Yacht Club on the Peninsula, a nice modern building over the river with good views.

If there’s time, I might also make it to a couple of things in that cross-border twilight zone (Lewisham) – the 1682 Boone’s Chapel on the Lee High Road, only restored last year, is open until 5pm both days, and the nearby Manor Gardens ice house and underground chambers in the park are visitable between 2 and 5.

That’s my Open House day. What’s yours?

Filed Under: Andrew Gilligan Tagged With: Severndroog Castle, What's On

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