Tower of London
To overseas visitors it symbolises London along with a clutch of other sites such as St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. But how many East Enders really know the East End’s own world-class tourist attraction. In fact, the Tower of London is a collection of towers. This week we take a tour around the Towers of London and their blood-soaked thousand-year history.
The Tower is London’s oldest collection of buildings and has been, in its time, a prison, zoo, armoury, mint, observatory and palace. Back in 1078, William the Conqueror cemented his capture of England with a small timber castle (now the White Tower). This was founded on Bryn Gwyn, a sacred pagan site and supposedly the burial ground of Bran, the crow god.
Successive monarchs fortified William’s castle from Henry III and Edward I, in the thirteenth century, to James I, the last monarch to use the Tower as a royal palace, between 1603 and 1625.
Today it’s a maze of buildings. The Beauchamp Tower was often used to house high-ranking inmates, such as Thomas More and Sir Walter Raleigh. Ironically its one of the lesser-know, fourteenth-century prisoner Thomas Beauchamp, who gave his name to the tower.
The Bell Tower was the unwelcome home for Elizabeth Tudor, later Elizabeth I, for three months in 1554, for allegedly plotting to kill her half-sister, devout Catholic Queen Mary. Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plotters were tortured here before their trial in Westminster Hall in 1605. Diarist Samuel Pepys got permission from Charles II to dig up the tower floor in 1662, believing there was £50,000 in gold buried there. After 15 hours they gave up their unsuccessful treasure hunt.
The Bloody Tower was built in 1400 as the Garden Tower but got its gorier soubriquet in 1483. The 12-year-old Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York (the Princes in the Tower) were held here before being murdered. In 1674 two skeletons were discovered in the White Tower and reburied in Westminster Abbey. A 1933 forensic examination was unable to confirm whether the bones were those of the princes.
The Bowyer Tower was the last home of Edward IV’s brother, the Duke of Clarence. Imprisoned here for treason he was then drowned in a butt of wine.
The Brick Tower was Walter Raleigh’s place of confinement, locked up in 1592 for seducing one of the Queen’s maids of honour. The Byward Tower, meanwhile, forms the main entrance through the outer walls, and was built at the end of the thirteenth century.
Elizabeth I sent her fair share of people to the Tower. Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, got a fame he wouldn’t have wanted, having the Devereux Tower named after him after being imprisoned here in 1601 prior to his execution.
A cosier tale lies behind the name of the Lanthorn Tower. Built in the 1220s, it got its name from a nightly lantern placed in the turrets to guide ships along the Thames.
The Lion Tower stood from 1200 to 1834 (today it’s the site of the ticket office and refreshment room). Appropriately, it was home to the Royal Menagerie, founded in 1235 when the Holy Roman Emperor sent Henry III a trio of leopards.
Colonel Blood and his men tried to steal the Crown Jewels from the Martin Tower in 1671, and 11 German spies were shot here during the First World War.
St Thomas’s Tower was built in the thirteenth century. Containing a chapel dedicated to Thomas a Beckett, and Irish spy Roger Casement was held here during World War I. He was later executed for spying for Germany.
The Salt Tower (previously Julius Caesar’s Tower) was built in 1235 as a prison for Jesuits. The walls contain fascinating stone carvings for casting horoscopes, and carved body parts symbolising the wounds of Christ.
In the Wakefield Tower, on 21 May 1461, Henry VI was murdered while at prayer. And so to the White Tower. The reason for the naming of London’s oldest building, dating from 1078, is more mundane – it was redubbed after being whitewashed in 1240. Nevertheless it has seen more history than most. London’s Jewish community was imprisoned here in 1270 (and 260 were executed). Richard II signed his abdication statement here. Henry VIII chose to live here in the early 1530s. And Guy Fawkes was shackled hand and foot in the tower’s dungeon – the ironically named ‘Little Ease’.