Carry on to Greenwich, where the tall ships are here for a festival gathering. The pier by the Cutty Sark is crowded and festive, with food, drink, a merry-go-round and throngs of sightseers. Some of the ships are here and some at Woolich, a little to the east. A bit disappointing visually, though, as the sails aren't up so they're not really in full regaliag.
J has another destination, though. St Elfege's Church, the Greenwich home church of James Wolfe, conqueror of Quebec in 1759. This weekend the church is open to visitors, as always, but they're also giving tours of the crypt on this occasion. The church people are very welcoming and point us to the corner where the Wolfe information has been gathered. In fact James Wolfe's father, also a general, is buried in the church as well. And there's another Canadian connection. Thomas Kelsey, the first European to reach Saskatchewan, lies in the churchyard.
I'm curious about the church for a more personal reason. My German ancestors sailed to Greenwich or nearby Deptford from Rotterdam in 1709 and spent the winter at one of 1709-1710 at one of three encampments in the area. Two years ago we went to Blackheath but what we guessed to be the nearest church wasn't old enough. So the question is, was St Elfege's here then? The timing is critical. This church was the first to be built under the auspices of Queen Anne, and it was Queen Anne who allowed refugees from the Rhineland to become British subjects in return for becoming labourers in (what was still) British North America. I can't remember their dates of sailing, but later, with internet access, realise that the church on site at the time would have been the medieval church that preceded the present building - a church that had to be rebuilt after its roof fell in during a storm in November 1710.
Some of the foundations of this church are still in evidence in the crypt, which we are lucky enough to get a tour of. A small group of us are guided through the stone underworld where there are a number of tombs, including the Wolfe family vault. I'm not a huge Wolfe fan for various reasons, including his contempt for his Scottish enlisted men, but it's still interesting, and J is much more philosophical - not regarding Wolfe as notably worse than other English officers of the period. Other vaults hold the bones of other St Elfege's families, often seafaring families because of the church's proximity to the Greenwich docks. The crypt was also in use more recent times as a shelter for local families during the blitz, and one woman who returned recently to see the place she had spent wartime nights as a young girl was taken aback to realise that the place she had slept was not the bed she had supposed it to be but bedding on top of a tomb.