The Octagon Room Dome - Flamsteed House, Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, UK
N 51° 28.673 W 000° 00.088
30U E 708215 N 5707233
The view of the underside of the dome of the famed Octagon Room at Flamsteed House, one of the few remaining interiors designed by famed architect Sir Christopher Wren.
Waymark Code: WMT457
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/22/2016
Views: 6
This elegant yet decorative dome is classic Wren -- and is one of the few interiors he designed left in London.
The elegant Octagon Room at Flamsteed House looks like it was built for science, but was in fact built for show, aiming to impress Royal Patrons and other 17th and 18th century visitors, affording them a chance to use telescopes in an elegant atomosphere.
An interpretive sign in the Octagon Room reads as follows:
"THE OCTAGON ROOM
This is one of the few surviving interiors by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral.
Some serious astronomical work was done here, but it was built mainly “for pompe,” allowing important visitors to do some amateur observing in elegant surroundings.
The Octagon Room also housed to very fine clocks, which only needed winding once a year. These timekeepers use long 13 foot pendulums, concealed behind paneling, to keep accurate time. They were sufficiently accurate to resolve an ancient puzzle, by proving that the earth turns and a constant rate throughout the year.
In the Octagon Room, the pendulums of the clocks were concealed behind paneling. The long windows were necessary to accommodate the telescopes of the day (like the one in the photograph). The portraits of the observatories Royal Patrons hang over the door."
Hours Open:
M-Sat 10am-5pm
Address:
Royal Observatory
Greenwich
UK
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