(Updated March 2024) This lithograph shows an interior view of a lecture hall that once stood on Royal Hill, Greenwich. It shows a lecture underway, provided by the Greenwich branch of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The young lecturer is commanding a full and respectably-dressed audience. He stands below a bust of Francis Bacon with the motto 'Knowledge is Power'.

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in 1826, chiefly at the instigation of the Whig lawyer and politician, Lord Brougham. It aimed to provide cheap educational literature for those who could not obtain formal teaching, and had a particular focus on scientific subjects. It inspired the foundation of many local branches, some of which sponsored lecture series as well as the distribution of SDUK publications. While the SDUK hoped to reach working classes, its audiences tended to be middle class, as this print amply attests.

The Hall shown was built by George Smith (1782-1869), an architect whose widespread work in south-east London included the earliest Greenwich Railway Station (1840, not the rebuild of 1878) and a great deal for the Morden College estate. It stood amid other buildings on the north-west side of Royal Hill, where it joins Greenwich High Road, on part of the site now occupied by the 1929 Town Hall (now Meridian House). Royal Hill was widened when the site was cleared for the new Town Hall and the foundations of what preceded it run out to near the centre of present road.