The other royal observatory

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From our window in Isleworth, we see across a forested island in the Thames to another line of trees, beyond which is a greater green space, in the middle of which is the King’s Observatory. Sometimes I think I see a light from it coming through the trees.

I wasn’t aware of this when we came to live at this spot. Yet we had previously lived in Greenwich, almost at the foot of the greater Royal Observatory, at the other end of London.

Some of our correspondents in America knew about the King’s Observatory, and pointed out how close it is to us, and asked whether we had swum across the river to it. We haven’t; we have to go a long way around. Here’s part of my map of the district.

On the east or Surrey side of the Thames is a green expanse consisting of Kew botanical garden and the Old Deer Park. Within the Old Deer Park are sports fields and the Royal Surrey Golf Club, and in the middle of the golf course is a house: the observatory.

As you go along the path on the river bank, just past Richmond Lock you pass a steel sign with a slit down the middle.

The sign has information about the Old Deer Park: a map to the left of the slit, and to the right a text describing the park’s evolution from private royal domain to public amenity and conservation area. The text ends:

“Some of the trees are over 300 years old and the vista to the King’s Observatory in the centre of the park includes the original Meridian Line that was used to set the King’s Time at the Houses of Parliament before Greenwich became the Prime Meridian in 1884. Look through the slot to see the Observatory and Meridian Line.”

In other words, you are looking north along this meridian, which is parallel to the later-adopted Greenwich meridian. You don’t actually look through the slot to see the line of tiles marking the meridian: it’s in the ground at your feet.

I haven’t found any other reference to this “original Meridian Line” through the Kew observatory, preceding the Greenwich one. Perhaps you can help?

1769

That was a pivotal year for astronomers, because of the transit of Venus across the Sun. They hoped that by timing the moments Venus touched the Sun, as seen from different locations, they could determine a great unknown: the distance to the Sun, and hence the scale of the solar system. There are chapters on all this in our Venus book. Nations sent expeditions to California, Santo Domingo, Hudson’s Bay, northern Norway, Lapland, and India,” and Britain’s George III sent James Cook on his vast voyage to the south Pacific (resulting in British acquisition of Australia and New Zealand). The king wanted to see the transit himself, and that was what prompted the building of this observatory near close to his country residence.

His country residence was Richmond Lodge, in the Old Deer Park, which belonged to Richmond Palace (which disappeared around 1650). To make space, the small village of Sheen was erased. There is a history of vanished priories, palaces, and villages under this pleasant expanse. The distinguished architect of the house was William Chamberlain, and of the landscape, with its sweeping vistas, Capability Brown.

The observatory’s director, Stephen Demainbray, recorded that “His Majesty the King who made his observation with a Shorts reflecting telescope, magnifying Diameters 170 Times, was the first to view the Penumbra of Venus touching the Edge of the Sun’s Disk.”

The Greenwich observatory had been founded a century earlier and by a king of the previous dynasty, Charles II, in 1675. Its purpose was to work on another great scientific headache, of more down-to-Earth urgency than the size of the cosmos: how to determine longitude, so that ships would know how far around the globe they were and wouldn’t get wrecked on headlands. In 1884 at a conference in America, nations agreed to set longitude zero, the prime meridian, at Greenwich.

Meanwhile the old King’s Observatory had become disused and empty. Then from 1842 onward it was taken over by a succession of scientific bodies – the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society, the National Physical Laboratory, and the Meteorological Office – and. known as the Kew Observatory, became a center of pioneering work on cameras and other instruments to measure weather, the atmosphere, geomagnetism, and time. But by 1908 the electrification of London interfered with these instruments and they were moved to Eskdalemuir in Scotland; and in ==1091 the building reverted to royal ownership (the “Crown Estate”) and its King’s Observatory name, and was leased for commercial uses. And a modern successor to Capability Brown was hired to re-harmonize the surrounding landscapes.

Inside the old observatory

Months ago we walked across the golf course to take a look. We couldn’t go inside, because the building is now a private house (acquired, according to rumor, by an owner who lives in China).

This is the Thames floodplain, so the building was raised on a six-foot mound. Parts of the house are preserved museum-like there are tours, and more recently we joined in a tour – recently enough, I hope. that I can remember enough of what the guide told us.

You can see that the room is octagonal. It’s the ground floor of the central element of the small building, as shown in the model on the table.

We had to follow a route separated by screens from rooms being used for other purposes.

The sitting room has portratis of the king and his consort.

In the library, I couldn’t help wondering how many centuries have passed since anyone got key and ladder to reach and open a volume in those enormous rows.

One room has walls papered all around with an astonishingly detailed picture of a Chinese port.

From this octagonal room

you go up a spiral iron stair through a hatch

to see the telescope under its rotating dome

and can also step out onto the roof.

In this view from a window, there was some significance of the pond, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten what.

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