The design history of Greenwich Hospital from 1694 to 1735 is arranged here in 12 'sub-schemes'. There are drawings for all but two of these schemes at Sir John Soane's Museum: 1 (not represented) is probably the earliest scheme; 2 and 3 are the earliest designs on the main axis and can be interpreted as proposals by Wren in 1695 to extend beyond the original grant of land in October 1694; 4 is a reduction of 3 and immediately precedes 5, the design approved in January 1696 and begun in June that year; 6 is a revision of this scheme, datable to 1698, and contemporary with the design for the hall and the surviving model at Greenwich, but involving extensions to the hospital to the west and south; it remained current, with a few revisions, until 1711; 7, 8, and 9 are Hawksmoor's three schemes for enlargement, datable to 1711; 10 is the final revised scheme, involving the doubling of the north pavilions of the King Charles II and Queen Anne Buildings as enlarged pavilions for their base wings; 11 is Hawksmoor's final scheme for enlarging the hospital following the appointment of a new Commission in 1727 and includes his proposals for an infirmary on a site to the west of the hospital which was acquired in 1714; 12 is Thomas Ripley scheme for the completion of hospital, which was approved by Parliament in March 1735.

In 1691 Queen Mary signalled her desire to grant John Webb's King Charles II Building (1664-72) at Greenwich Palace for conversion 'as a hospital for seamen', and in October 1692 she and King William II made a formal grant of the building 'to be a hospital for wounded seamen', spurred on by the casualties sustained at the naval battle at La Hogue in May that year (Bold, Greenwich, p.95). Although Wren visited the site in January 1693, there is no evidence at this stage of any grander intent beyond converting John Webb's unfinished palace range, which King Charles II had ordered in 1663 as the west wing of a open-courtyard palace, facing the river, the middle range of which would have had a domed central hall, on the axis of the Queen's House.

The first official reference to the grant of a specific site is in a memorandum of 4 October 1694 to Treasury Commissioners, signed by Samuel Travers, the Surveyor General of Crown Lands, in Wren's Book of 'Court Orders' (Sir John Soane's Museum, volume 165; Wren Society, vol. XVIII, 1941, p.111). This describes the site that was formerly granted in a Warrant dated 25 October 1694 (backdated from March 1695; National Archives, ADM, 75/15). The site was to be bounded by the River Thames on the north and northern boundary of the garden of the Queen's House on the south; but it was to be divided in two halves by an avenue 115 feet wide extending from the Queen's House to the river.

The evidence of the drawings and the minutes of the Grand Committee, appointed on 14 May 1695, indicates that Wren initally regarded this grant of land as provisional and open to negotiation (ADM, 67/1). Schemes 2 and 3 exceed the grant of land and can be related to advice that Wren and others on the Grand Committee gave to Commissioners in May and September 1695. These two schemes were probably preceded by another early proposal, the 'side-step scheme' (1), in which the hospital is set immediately to the east of the avenue from the Queen's House to the river.

It has always been assumed that central domed scheme and the seven-block scheme (2 and 3) pre-date the formal grant of land in October 1694. The grant was marked out on a survey drawing in that month but not confirmed until March 1695, when the warrant for the new hospital was issued and 'letters patent' were sent out to appoint nearly 200 Commissioners and Trustess to oversee the project. There is, however, no evidence of any instruction to Wren to prepare a design before the first meeting of the Commissioners on 14 May 1695. It is argued here that these schemes are from 1695, and are the first of several fully worked up proposals for enlargement beyond the grant of land.

Between the seven-block scheme and the executed design is an important intermediary stage that aids our understanding of the genesis of the final plan: the 'four-block' plan at All Souls College (4). The seven-block scheme would have accommodated 3,888 men in the 12 wards south of the hall and chapel ranges (six on each side). The four-block scheme would have involved a loss of half the number of ward blocks, from six on each side of the axis to three. As the new blocks would have accommodated the same number of men (108 per floor, making 324 in each block), the scheme would have offered 1944 beds in the six blocks. More beds could have been provided in the King Charles II Court and its pendant, giving a total similar to the 2376 in the 'side-step' scheme (1).

The decision to start work on a specific design was taken on 17 January 1696, when designs were 'laid before the [Fabric] Committee' and approved (ADM, 67/1; Wren Society, VI, p. 33). This was the 'three-block scheme' (3), so called because the hall and dormitory ranges of the upper (southern) courts are in three parallel blocks either side of the avenue, the blocks on the north side being for the hall and chapel, as in the seven-block scheme. The hall and chapel ranges are now detached from the King Charles II Court and its pendant (known initially as 'King William's Wing', then as 'Princess Anne's Court', and finally as 'Queen Anne's Court'). The design is known from a detailed set of drawings in Hawskmoor's hand for the construction of a base wing and the conversion of King Charles II Building itself, attached to a royal warrant of 29 April 1696 (National Maritime Museum, ART/3), from a part-plan in SM volume 109/62, and from a block plan datable 1698 in the Lambeth Palace Library (MSS, 933/99; Bold, Greenwich, fig. 140).

This scheme was approved for engraving in December 1698 and the prints were issued in early September the following year (see Wren Society, VI, p. 83 top, and VIII, pl. 24). On 9 April 1700 the Fabric Committee ordered that the engravings should be issued to subscribers. By then, however, Wren had thoroughly revised the three-block courts to rectangular courts. This is the plan of the executed scheme in the model, paid for in January 1699 (6). Wren and Evelyn showed the model and 'the printed draughts of the Hospitall' to King William III on 3 April 1700. They must have described the changes, for he approved the scheme and ordered 'the diligent carrying on of the building' (ibid., p. 41).

In the engraving of the three-block scheme, printed in September 1699 (Wren Society, VI, p. 83), the Base Wing of the later Queen Anne's Court (described in the accounts until 1699 as 'King William's Wing') is identical to that of the King Charles II Building. Work on the foundations of the end-pavilions of the 'Queen Anne' Base Wing was ordered on 9 April 1700; it continued in December that year (ADM, 67/2; Wren Society, VI, pp. 41-42) and must by then have included part of the central range of the Base Wing, which is set back further from the front range than in the engraved plan, creating a larger central court in the eastern of the two pendant courtyard blocks. This is the plan of the 'Queen Anne' Court in the model of 1698-99, but it was not implemented until late 1700 or early 1701.

By May the following year work was well in hand on the stonework of the Doric portico of the King William West Dormitory. This is the other major revision to the engraved plan, and its implementation was also delayed by about two years.

The authorship of the West Dormitory has been much debated. The most likely hypothesis is that put forward by Kerry Downes (Hawksmoor, p.86) that 'Wren gave Hawksmoor his own way with this part of the design, and that, while he would not have produced it himself, he not only tolerated it but saw that it was exciting -- even if dangerously fanciful.' Hawksmoor was the author of all the drawings for schemes 1 to 6, save for the two perspectives in scheme 2; by late 1698, when designs for the model were produced, he was in complete control as draughtsman and had a large measure of freedom as a designer (see entries on 109/43 and 44). However, Wren remained closely involved as Surveyor, and it was he who presented the model to the king in April 1700. Wren must have endorsed this design, even if he was not responsible for many of its details.

The 'final scheme' (10) involved the doubling of the north pavilions of King Charles II and Queen Anne Buildings in 1712 as enlargements of the existing north pavilions of the Base Wings of these courts. This design followed several abortive schemes by Hawksmoor in 1711 for the enlargement of the hospital southwards, on the site of the garden of the Queen's House and the Queen's House itself (7, 8, 9) Work progressed on the final scheme, with some revisions, until Thomas Ripley's appointment as Surveyor in 1729, although in 1728 Hawksmoor prepared a further enlargement scheme, based on his third of 1711 (9), but now with a fully worked up design for an infirmary on land that had been acquired in 1714 (12). Ripley's revised final scheme involved major revisions to the East Dormitory of Queen Mary's Court, both to increase the bed accommodation and to bring the external elevations into line with current Palladian taste.

References

The primary sources for the chronology of the design and the sequence of construction are mostly in the National Archives at Kew. They are the Minutes of the Grand Committee (appointed by the Commissioners in May 1695), ADM, 72/1; the Minutes of the Fabric Committee (active from January 1696), ADM, 72/2; the Works Accounts (one volume per calendar year, beginning in 1696), ADM, 68/670 ff.; deeds and charters relating to the original grant of land and the acquisition of additional land by the Trustees and Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital (ADM, 75/various); and site maps and surveys prepared from 1693 onwards (MR, 1/21, 253, 329 (2); CRES, 2/1642; MPE, 1/245. Edited extracts from the Grand and Fabric Committee Minutes up to 1716, and a few later passages (although none from the Works Accounts), were published in Wren Society, VI (1929), pp. 32-76.

The most important secondary sources (which include references to the above material) are, in date order:

A.T. Bolton and H.D. Hendry (eds), The Wren Society, vols VI (1929) and VIII (1931);

K. Downes, Hawksmoor (London, 1979), pp. 83-98;

K. Downes, Wren (London, 1982), pp. 107-10;

J. Bold (et al.), Greenwich: An Architectural History of the Royal Hospital for Seamen and the Queen's House (New Haven and London, 2000);

A. Geraghty, The Architectural Drawings of Sir Christopher Wren at All Souls College, Oxford, a Complete Catalogue (London, 2007)