Countries) working in his household “for the said feat of beer-brewing”, even though under Tudor law English subjects could not employ more than four foreigners. Clearly John Pope’s beer brewing was considered important work.

The royal Palace of Placentia at Greenwich was a huge household, and we can be sure that enormous quantities of both ale and beer were consumed. Elizabeth I is known to have been an enthusiastic beer drinker. However, after Elizabeth died, Greenwich was less patronised by the Stuarts, and the Palace of Placentia was left to gradually become derelict. It was subsequently plundered by Cromwell’s troops and even the materials from which the Palace itself was built were looted, leaving it a ruin. Grandeur returned to Greenwich during the late 17th and early 18th centuries,with the laying-out of the Park and the building of the Queen’s House, the Royal Greenwich Hospital and the Observatory.

Greenwich, however, had by now become a prosperous town in its own right with a fishing port, a market, shipyards in next-door Deptford and wealthy merchants. It was also an important staging post on the route to Dover with plenty of inns and taverns, some of which brewed their own beer, and various local breweries. In the 1703 “A Guide to Gentlemen and Farmers for Brewing the Finest Malt Liquors”, it states that “Thames water taken up above Greenwich, at low water when it is free from the brackishness of the sea……makes very strong drink.”

The buildings now known as the Old Royal Naval College were previously home to the