Tower of London and around

Tower Hill is choked with tourists who flock here to see two of London’s most famous landmarks, Tower Bridge and the adjacent Tower of London. Despite all the attendant hype and heritage claptrap, the Tower remains one of London’s most remarkable buildings, site of some of the goriest events in the nation’s history, and somewhere all visitors and Londoners should explore at least once. Sitting beside the river, at the eastern edge of the old city walls, the Tower is chiefly famous as a place of imprisonment and death, yet it has also been used as a royal residence, armoury, mint, menagerie, observatory and – a function it still serves – a safe-deposit box for the Crown Jewels. It should also not be forgotten that the Tower is, above all, the most perfectly preserved (and restored) medieval fortress in the country.

Begun as a simple watchtower, built by William the Conqueror to keep an eye on the City, the Tower had evolved into a palace-fortress by 1100. The inner curtain wall and towers were built under Henry III, while the outer fortifications, and an even wider moat, were added by Edward I on his return from the Crusades, which means that most of what’s visible today was already in place by 1307, the year of Edward’s death. Though the Tower has been besieged on a number of occasions – first, in 1191, when Bishop Longchamp held out against Richard I’s brother, John, but caved in after only three days – it has been sacked just once. This was during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, among others, was dragged out and lynched.

The Tower’s first prisoner, the Bishop of Durham, arrived in 1101, imprisoned by Henry I, and promptly escaped from the window of his cell by a rope, having got the guards drunk. Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr, heir to the Welsh throne, attempted a similar feat from the White Tower in 1244, with less success – “his head and neck were crushed between his shoulders… a most horrid spectacle” – the window he used was subsequently bricked up and can still be seen on the south side of the Tower. Incidentally, the most famous escapee from the Tower was the Jacobite 5th Earl of Nithsdale who, the night before his execution in 1716, managed to get past the guards dressed as his wife’s maid (despite his red beard), and lived in poverty and happiness for almost thirty years in exile in Rome.

Following the Restoration in 1660, the general public were admitted to the Tower for the first time to view the coronation regalia and the impressive displays of arms and armour – by the end of Victoria’s reign, there were half a million visitors to the fortress each year. Nevertheless, during both of the world wars, the Tower was still used to hold prisoners: Roger Casement, the Irish nationalist, was held here briefly before his trial and hanging in 1916, and the last VIP inmate was Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who flew secretly into Britain to try to sue for peace in May 1941 and was held in the Tower for a few days. The last execution took place on August 14, 1941, when Josef Jakobs, a German spy who (like Hess) had broken his ankle while parachuting into Britain, was given the privilege of being seated before the firing squad. In a layering of London legends, even the Kray Twins have done time here.

Beefeaters

Formed in 1485 by Henry VII as a personal bodyguard, the Tower’s forty or so Beefeaters are officially known as Yeoman Warders – the nickname “Beefeaters” was coined in the seventeenth century, when it was a term of abuse for a well-fed domestic servant. These self-assured, eminently photogenic guards are best known for their scarlet-and-gold Tudor costumes, but unless it’s a special occasion you’re more likely to see them in dark-blue Victorian “undress”. The Beefeaters have all done at least 22 years’ military service, reached at least the rank of sergeant major and are aged between 40 and 55 on appointment. The first-ever woman Beefeater, Moira Cameron, was appointed in 2007; ten years later she was joined by a second, Amanda Clark. All the Beefeaters live in the Tower and one of their many duties is to give theatrically irreverent guided tours to the tourists, which many of them clearly relish. They don’t take any nonsense, however – in 2017, a Beefeater ticked off a tourist for trying to make a Queen’s Guard move by throwing her glove at him.

In 2014, to mark the centenary of the beginning of Britain’s involvement in World War I, 888,246 ceramic poppies filled the Tower’s moat. The poppies were installed progressively, over a period of four months, so that the moat gradually turned red, until every one of the British military fatalities in the war was represented by a poppy.

information and tours

Website hrp.org.uk.

Opening hours March–Oct Mon & Sun 10am–5.30pm, Tues–Sat 9am–5.30pm; Nov–Feb closes 4.30pm. Last admission 30min before close.

Admission Tickets bought online are cheaper and save you queuing. Prices (in person/online): £28/£24.80, concessions £22/£19.30, children 5–15 £13/£11.50.

Telephone ticket office 0844 482 7799 or 020 3166 6000.

Postcode EC3N 4AB.

Tube Tower Hill.

Eating There’s a spacious café in the New Armouries building, and plenty of benches on which to picnic. Alternatively, you can obtain a re-entry pass and have lunch outside the Tower.

Tours You can explore the Tower complex independently, or with an audioguide (£4), but it’s a good idea to get your bearings by joining up with one of the free, entertaining hour-long guided tours, given every 30min by one of the Tower’s Beefeaters – it’s also the easiest way to visit the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula.

Bell Tower

Visitors enter the Tower by the Middle Tower and the Byward Tower, in the southwest corner. Two of the first victims of the Reformation – Thomas More and John Fisher – were incarcerated nearby in the Bell Tower, from whose dinky wooden belfry a bell still signals the curfew hour (and used to toll to signal an execution). More was initially allowed writing materials, but later they were withdrawn; Fisher was kept in worse conditions (“I decay forthwith, and fall into coughs and diseases of my body, and cannot keep myself in health”) and was so weak that he had to be carried to the scaffold on Tower Hill. The 20-year-old future Queen Elizabeth I arrived here in 1554, while her half-sister Queen Mary tried to find incriminating evidence against her. Catholic Mass was performed daily in Elizabeth’s cell for the two months of her imprisonment, but she refused to be converted.

Traitors’ Gate

Most prisoners were delivered through the waterfront Traitors’ Gate (originally called Water Gate), which forms part of St Thomas’s Tower, now partially reconstructed to re-create the atmosphere of Edward I’s medieval palace. The King’s Bedchamber has a beautiful little oratory in one of the turrets, while in the larger oratory of the Throne Room, in 1471, the “saintly but slightly daft” Henry VI was murdered at prayer, possibly on the orders of Edward IV or Richard III. Not long afterwards, Edward had his brother, the Duke of Clarence, executed in the Tower for high treason, drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine (at his own request – according to Shakespeare).

Bloody Tower

The main entrance to the Inner Ward is beneath a 3.5-tonne, seven-hundred-year-old portcullis, which forms part of the Bloody Tower, so-called because it was here that the 12-year-old Edward V and his 10-year-old brother, Richard, were accommodated “for their own safety” in 1483 by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester (later Richard III), following the death of their father, Edward IV. Of all the Tower’s many inhabitants, few have so captured the public imagination as the Princes in the Tower. According to Thomas More, they were smothered in their beds, and buried naked at the foot of the White Tower. In 1674, workmen discovered the skeletons of two young children close to the Tower; they were subsequently buried in Innocents’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The study of Walter Raleigh is re-created in the lower chamber, while his sleeping quarters in the upper chamber, built to accommodate his wife, children and three servants, now house an exhibition on the Princes in the Tower and on the poisoning of the poet Thomas Overbury. Confined to the Bloody Tower in 1613 by James I, Overbury was slowly poisoned to death with arsenic concealed within the tarts and jellies sent by the wife of one of the king’s favourites, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Three years later, Carr and his wife were themselves arrested, tried and condemned to death – in the end, they were simply incarcerated in the Tower for six years before being pardoned (both died in poverty at a later date). The Lieutenant of the Tower, meanwhile, was hanged for failing to protect his prisoners (namely Overbury).

Walter Raleigh

The Bloody Tower’s most illustrious inmate – even more famous in his time than the princes – was Walter Raleigh (1554–1618), who spent three separate periods in the Tower. His first misdemeanour was in 1591 when he impregnated and secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of Elizabeth I’s ladies-in-waiting, without the Queen’s permission. A year later his crime was discovered and he was sent to the Tower (with his wife Bess); his second spell began in 1603, when he was found guilty of plotting against James I. This second stay lasted nearly thirteen years; accompanied by his wife and kids, he spent the time growing and smoking tobacco (his most famous import), composing poetry, concocting potions in his distillery and writing The Historie of the World, which outsold even Shakespeare, despite being banned by James I for being “too saucy in censuring princes”. When Raleigh complained that the noise of the portcullis kept him awake at night, he was moved to much worse accommodation. In 1616 he was released and sent off to Guyana in pursuit of gold, on condition that he didn’t attack the Spanish; he broke his word and was sent straight back to the Tower on his return in 1618. For six weeks he was imprisoned in “one of the most cold and direful dungeons”, before being beheaded at Westminster.

White Tower

William the Conqueror’s central hall-keep, known as the White Tower, is the original “Tower”, begun in 1076. The name comes either from the white Caen stone used in its facing or from the whitewashing undertaken in the reign of Henry III. The structure now sports a Kentish ragstone exterior thanks to Wren, who added the large windows. Of the tower’s four turrets, topped by stylish Tudor cupolas, only three are square: the fourth is rounded in order to encase the main spiral staircase, and for a short while was used by Charles II’s royal astronomer, Flamsteed, before he moved to Greenwich. The main entrance to the Tower is the original one, high up in the south wall, out of reach of the enemy, and accessed by a wooden staircase that could be removed during times of siege.

Royal Armouries

The four floors of arms and armour displayed within the tower represent a mere smidgen of the Royal Armouries (the majority of which resides in Leeds), originally established by Henry VIII in Greenwich and on display here since the time of Charles II. Among the most striking armour displayed on the ground floor is the colossal garniture of 1540 made for Henry VIII (and famous for its protruding codpiece, which women used to touch to boost their fertility), juxtaposed with boy king Edward VI’s tiny suit of armour.

The Line of Kings, on the same floor, is a display first recorded in 1660, a sort of Restoration waxworks only in wood, originally depicting the monarchs of England on horseback. Also on show here is a suit of armour for a man six feet nine inches tall (once thought to have been John of Gaunt) and one for a boy just three feet one and a half inches high (possibly Charles I). On the top floor, there’s an interesting exhibition on the executions that have taken place within the Tower and on Tower Hill over the years – the block and axe from the last beheading are here.

Royal Menagerie

The Royal Menagerie began in earnest in 1235 when the Holy Roman Emperor presented three “leopards” to Henry III; the keeper was initially paid sixpence a day for the sustenance of the beasts (they were, in fact, lions), and one penny for himself. They were joined in 1251 by a polar bear from the King of Norway (who was put on a leash and allowed to catch fish in the Thames) and in 1255 by an elephant from the King of France. From the 1330s, the lions were put on public display in the outer barbican (which became known as the Lion Tower). James I was particularly keen on the menagerie, and used to stage regular animal fights on the green, but the practice was stopped in 1609 when one of the bears killed a child. In 1704, six lions, two leopards, three eagles, two Swedish owls “of great bigness”, two “cats of the mountains” and a jackal were recorded. The 1753 guide to the Tower mentions the antics of a large baboon who “will heave any Thing as to split Stools, Bowls or any such wooden Utensils in a hundreds Pieces.” An 1810 guidebook states that “formerly several monkies were kept, but one of them having torn a boy’s leg in a dangerous manner they were removed”.

The menagerie was transferred to the newly founded London Zoo in the 1830s, leaving the Tower with just its ravens, descendants of early scavengers attracted by waste from the palace kitchens. They have been protected by royal decree since the Restoration, and have their wings clipped so they can’t fly away – legend says that the Tower (and therefore the kingdom) will fall if they do, the theory almost put to the test during the World War II after the Tower suffered heavy bombing and only one raven survived, though numbers were soon brought back up. While the ravens may appear harmless, they are wild, territorial creatures best given a wide berth. They live in enclosures on the south lawn of the Inner Ward, roam the Tower by day, are fed raw meat from Smithfield Market, have individual names and even have their own graveyard in the dry moat near the main entrance.

Chapel of St John’s

Whatever your interests, you should pay a visit to the first-floor Chapel of St John’s,a beautiful Norman structure completed in 1080, making it the oldest intact ecclesiastical building in London. It was here that Henry VI’s body was buried following his murder in 1471; that Henry VII’s queen, Elizabeth of York, lay in state surrounded by eight hundred candles, after dying in childbirth; and that Lady Jane Grey came to pray on the night before her execution. Today, the once highly decorated blocks of honey-coloured Caen limestone are free of all ecclesiastical excrescences, leaving the chapel’s smooth curves and rounded apse perfectly unencumbered.

Tower Green

Despite appearances, the pretty little open space of Tower Green was the chief place of execution within the Tower for many centuries, reserved for prestigious prisoners who were treated to their beheading away from the baying crowd – the likes of Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey were executed here, their names appearing alongside the other victims on an incongruous glass monument at the centre of the green. The bloody, headless corpses of the executed (from Tower Green and Tower Hill) were buried in the Tudor Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, to the north, accessible only during the first and last hour the Tower is open, or on the Beefeaters’ tours.

On the west side of the green, the Beauchamp Tower houses an exhibition on the Tower’s prisoners on the ground floor. Beauchamp Tower itself accommodated only the wealthiest prisoners and boasts a better class of graffiti: Lord Dudley, husband of Lady Jane Grey, even commissioned a stonemason to carve the family crest on the first floor.

In the southwest corner of the green is the sixteenth-century Queen’s House (closed to the public), distinguished by its swirling Tudor timber frames and the most luxurious cells in the Tower. In 1688, William Penn, the Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, was confined to the Queen’s House, where he wrote his most popular work, No Cross, No Crown.

Tower ceremonies

The Ceremony of the Keys is a seven-hundred-year-old, seven-minute floodlit ceremony. At 9.53pm daily, the Chief Yeoman Warder, accompanied by the Tower Guard, locks the Tower gates, and as he attempts to return to the Inner Ward, the following exchange then takes place: “Halt. Who comes there?” “The Keys.” “Whose Keys?” “Queen Elizabeth’s Keys.” “Pass then, all’s well.” Then the Last Post is sounded and the ceremony ends. To find out how to witness this long-running drama, visit the website.

Gun Salutes are fired by the Honourable Artillery Company at 1pm at Tower Wharf on royal birthdays and other special occasions.

The Constable’s Dues occurs once a year when a large Royal Navy ship moors alongside the Tower; the ship’s captain and his escort march through the Tower and present a barrel of rum to the Constable of the Tower.

The Ceremony of the Lilies and Roses is carried out every year on May 21 by the provosts of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, who place white lilies and roses (their respective emblems) on the spot where King Henry VI, founder of both institutions, was murdered on May 21, 1471.

The Beating of the Bounds ceremony takes place once every three years (the next in 2020) on Ascension Day (forty days after Easter), outside the walls of the Tower. The 29 stones that mark the limits of the Tower’s jurisdiction are thrashed with willow wands by local children, the Chief Yeoman Warder yelling “Mark well!” and the kids responding “Marked!”

Jewel House

The castellated Waterloo Block or Jewel House, north of the White Tower, now holds the Crown Jewels, the major reason so many people flock to the Tower. The Jewels include the world’s three largest cut diamonds, but only a few of the exhibits could be described as beautiful – assertions of status and wealth are more important considerations. Queues can be long, and you only get to view the rocks from moving walkways. The vast majority of exhibits postdate the Commonwealth of 1649–60, when most of the royal riches were melted down for coinage or sold off.

Before you reach the walkway, look out for the twelfth-century Coronation Spoon, the oldest piece of regalia. The first major piece along the walkway is the Sceptre with the Cross, which contains the world’s largest colourless cut diamond, the 530-carat “First Star of Africa” or Cullinan I, followed by St Edward’s Crown, used in every coronation since the Restoration. The legendary 105.6-carat Koh-i-Nûr (Mountain of Light) is set into the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother’s Crown from 1937. The last and most famous crown, set apart from the others, is the Imperial State Crown, worn by the Queen on state occasions, and sparkling with 2868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 5 rubies and 273 pearls. The crown contains several very famous jewels: St Edward’s Sapphire, taken from the ring of Edward the Confessor and set in the cross atop the crown; the Black Prince’s Ruby, on the front cross; and Cullinan II, the 317-carat “Second Star of Africa”; the crown also contains pearls from Elizabeth I’s earrings.

The Tower Green Ten

Being beheaded at Tower Hill (as opposed to being hanged, drawn and quartered) was a privilege of the nobility; being beheaded on Tower Green, the stretch of lawn to the west of the White Tower, was an honour conferred on just ten people. It was an arrangement that suited both parties: the victim was spared the jeering crowds of Tower Hill, and the monarch was spared bad publicity. Among the victims were: Lord Hastings, executed immediately after his arrest on the orders of Richard III, who swore he wouldn’t go to dinner until Hastings was beheaded; Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII’s second wife), accused of incest and adultery, who was dispatched cleanly and swiftly with a French long sword rather than the traditional axe, at her own insistence; 19-year-old Catherine Howard (Henry VIII’s fifth wife and Anne’s cousin), convicted of adultery and beheaded along with her lady-in-waiting, who was deemed an accomplice; 16-year-old Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen for just nine days; and the Earl of Essex, one-time favourite of Elizabeth I.

Salt Tower to the Martin Tower

Visitors can walk along the Tower’s eastern battlements, starting at the Salt Tower, which features more prisoners’ graffiti, including a stunningly detailed zodiac carved by Hugh Draper, incarcerated in 1561 on a charge of sorcery. This is where Edward I kept the Scottish King John Balliol prisoner for three years from 1296. Halfway along the walls, the Constable Tower contains a small exhibition on the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt.

The Martin Tower, at the far end of the wall walk, houses a display of crowns with their gems taken out and relates the story of the most famous attempt to steal the Crown Jewels which took place here in 1671, when “Colonel” Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer, made an attempt to make off with the lot, disguised as a parson. He was caught with the crown under his habit, the orb in one of his accomplices’ breeches and the sceptre about to be filed in half. Charles II, good-humoured as ever, met and pardoned the felon, and even awarded him a pension and made him welcome at court.

Fusiliers’ Museum

Last, and probably least, the Tower also contains the Fusiliers’ Museum, which tells the story of the Royal Fusiliers, now part of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The original regiment was founded by James II in 1685 from Tower guards and was called the Ordnance Regiment, as it was their job to escort the artillery. The museum trots through the regiment’s various campaigns, displays its medals and spoils from across the Empire, and lists its most famous alumni, although it neglects to mention that East End gangsters, the Kray Twins, were once Fusiliers, and were in fact held prisoner in the Tower overnight in 1952 after having failed to turn up on time for their National Service call-up.

Off with his Head!

During the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, rioters broke into the Tower, dragged out the Lord High Treasurer (the man responsible for the hated poll tax), and hacked him to death on Tower Hill, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, the first official beheading didn’t take place until 1388 with the last one in 1747, when the 80-year-old Jacobite Lord Lovat was dispatched. Lovat’s beheading drew such a crowd that one of the spectators’ stands collapsed, killing several bystanders, at which Lovat exclaimed: “The more mischief, the better sport.” The Duke of Monmouth, beheaded in 1685 for his rebellion against James II, suffered the most botched execution: it took Jack Ketch (who lives on in Punch & Judy shows) five blows of the axe to sever his head, and even then the job had to be finished off with a surgeon’s knife. Hangings continued for another thirty-odd years, ending with the execution of two prostitutes and a one-armed soldier arrested for attacking a Catholic-run pub in the 1780 Gordon Riots.

All Hallows-by-the-Tower

Byward St • Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat & Sun 10am–5pm • Guided tours Mon–Fri April–Oct 2–4pm • Free • 020 7481 2928,ahbtt.org.uk • Tower Hill

Back outside the Tower site, to the west of the ticket office, lies All Hallows-by-the-Tower. This pre-Fire church only just survived the Blitz – most of the church is a postwar neo-Gothic pastiche wrought in concrete. The furnishings are fascinating, however, and include lots of maritime memorials, model ships, two wings of a Flemish triptych from around 1500, and, best of all, the exquisitely carved Gibbons limewood font cover, in the southwest chapel. Close by is an arch from the original seventh-century church; remains of a tessellated Roman pavement can also be found in the tiny Crypt Museum (free). All Hallows also has some superb pre-Reformation brasses.

Tower Hill

To the northwest of the Tower lies traffic-blighted Tower Hill, where the Tower’s convicted “traitors” were executed. The actual spot for the executions, at what was the country’s first permanent scaffold, is marked by a plaque on the west side of Trinity Square Gardens, which names a handful of the 125 executed here. Close by stands the Mercantile Marine Memorial, designed by Edwin Lutyens, smothered with the names of the 12,000 merchant seamen who died in World War I, and subsequently enlarged with a vast, sprawling sunken section commemorating the 24,000 more who died in World War II.

The marine theme is continued in the buildings overlooking the gardens: at 10 Trinity Square is the gargantuan temple-like former headquarters of the Port of London Authority, an Edwardian edifice that exudes imperial confidence, with Neptune adorning the main tower (the building now houses unaffordable apartments and a luxury Four Seasons hotel); and, to the east, the elegant Neoclassical former headquarters of Trinity House (75min tours take place two to three times a month and must be booked; £8; 020 7481 6900, tours@thls.org), the organization that oversees the upkeep of the lighthouses of England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar – check out the reliefs of mermen, cherubs and lighthouses on the main facade, and the splendid gilded nautical weather vane. Continuing east, you’ll find perhaps the most impressive remaining section of London’s Roman walls behind the Grange City Hotel, on Cooper’s Row.

Tower Bridge

SE1 2UP • Daily: April–Sept 10am–5.30pm; Oct–March 9.30am–5pm • £9.80, concessions £6.80, children 5–15 £3.90 • 020 7403 3761, towerbridge.org.uk • Tower Hill

Tower Bridge ranks with Big Ben as the most famous of all London landmarks. Completed in 1894, its neo-Gothic towers are clad in Cornish granite and Portland stone, but conceal a frame of Scottish steel, which, at the time, represented a considerable engineering achievement, allowing a road crossing that could be raised to give tall ships access to the upper reaches of the Thames. The raising of the bascules (from the French for “seesaw”) remains an impressive sight, and an event that takes place around a thousand times a year – visit the website for “bridge lift times”. If you buy a ticket for a visit, packaged as the Tower Bridge Exhibition, you get to walk across the elevated walkways linking the summits of the towers, now with glass floors for views of the bridge and traffic below, and visit the Tower’s Engine Rooms, on the south side of the bridge, where you can see the now-defunct, giant coal-fired boilers which drove the hydraulic system until 1976, and play some interactive engineering games.

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