A small patch by the Thames has royal connections going back centuries, which a new £6m centre reveals

This impressive building use to house Royal Navy marine architects’ workshops, but it’s on the site of something much grander. On this spot on a bend of the Thames was not just a royal residence, but for the Tudors the royal residence, their version of Buckingham Palace.

Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I were all borne in Greenwich Palace, Edward VI died here. The campaign against the Armada was planned here, and the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots was signed here.

But after it ceased to be a royal a palace, the site went to have a quite different but just as colourful a history, a story told now in the £6m Discover Greenwich, created by the Greenwich Foundation which now has responsibility for it.

And the news that Greenwich, a World Heritage Site since 1997, is to become a Royal Borough as part of the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012 adds a sheen to the new centre.

Although it emphasises the architecture of Hawksmoor, Wren and Stuart, and life in the Greenwich Hospital for seamen, which it was for more than 150 years, its royal story is the one which fascinates the most – a story which can partly be told now through objects recovered in the series of archaeological excavations of the palace, including the chapel in which Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves.

Greenwich’s royal connections go back much further than the Tudors, however, at least to the 9th century AD. Sixth century Saxon remains have been found in Greenwich Park, and in 916 Alfred the Great’s daughter, Elstrudis, who was married to the Count of Flanders, gave the estate to the Abbey of St Peter’s in Ghent.

Discover Greenwich picks up the story in about 1450, but the small fishing settlement had reverted to royal ownership in 1414 and in 1427 was ceded to Henry V’s brother, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He built an impressive house, calling it Bellacourt, but when he fell out with the queen, Margaret of Anjou, she took it over, renaming it the Palace of Pleasaunce.

It was Henry VII who developed it into a full scale royal residence, calling it Placentia, “a pleasant place in which to live”. Henry VIII was born here while construction was going on, and by 1506 it was known as the Palace of Greenwich. His daughters Mary and Elizabeth were both born here too, and his son Edward died here.

As Discover Greenwich reveals, the palace was a bustling community throughout the 16th century, and objects found in a series of archaeological explorations help tell the story. Particularly significant was the 2005 dig on the site of a car park where the chapel royal, begun by Henry VII in about 1500, stood. This was the household chapel, and although Henry’s fourth marriage is thought to have happened in it, most royal solemnities took place in the nearby friary church.

The monarch’s apartments were linked to the chapel, however, and the royal family would have attended services on a partially secluded first floor space.

Enough detail was obtained in the dig for the chapel to be pictorially reconstructed, and – with incense wafting with the music of Thomas Tallis – this provides a first glimpse of the more humble worship of Tudor royal households.

Two of the more delightful objects are the large oak figures from the mid-16th century representing beer and gin drinking – though the latter’s title is an anachronism because gin wasn’t introduced to England until the late 17th century. They would have stood either end of the buttery screen at Greenwich Palace which shielded diners from the area where food was prepared, and they are a rare depiction of ordinary dress in Tudor times.

The foundation has been a le to reconstruct a Tudor window from the palace using original stonework, re-glazed using medieval techniques with the badges of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

And from the town are more humble finds, like the stoneware “witch’s bottle” containing human hair, fingernails and carpenter’s nails which would have stood at a house’s threshold to ward off evil spells.

“The World Heritage Site is still evolving to meet the expectations of several million people who visit the area each year” said Duncan Wilson, director of the Greenwich Foundation. “Discover Greenwich provides an indispensable starting point for understanding and appreciating this rich history – as well as becoming a contemporary destination in its own right.”