Off with their heads!

For our second full day in London, we explored the Tower of London compound which is located on the north bank of the River Thames. To get there, we took the Piccadilly line eastbound to King’s Cross St. Pancras where we switched to the circle line to get to the Tower Hill station.

When you get out of the tube station at Tower Hill, there is a piece of the original Roman wall that circled the city of London. Stones were added on top of those laid by the Romans during the Medieval period. This was a really cool artifact to see especially since I once wrote a research paper about the importance of the Roman influence on modern British society; many of the roads created during the Roman occupation of London are still the basis for the city layout.

The Tower of London is composed of multiple buildings that were constructed beginning in the mid eleventh century and was added on for centuries by future monarchs. In fact, the last surviving Tudor construction are a part of the Tower of London with the Great Fire destroying most of the architecture in the city from this time period. Probably the most famous architectural element of the Tower of London is the White Tower, which is the oldest complex, first constructed by William the Conqueror after he was crowned King of England in 1066. While I did not go into this building, it was incredible to see an almost thousand-year piece of architecture up close.

A cool update to the Tower is that the grounds where the moat once flowed have been turned into beautiful flower garden.

I went into three of the building at the Tower of London: the Jewel House, Beauchamp Tower, and the Bloody Tower.

As the name would suggest, the Jewel House is where the Crown Jewels are stored. The Crown Jewels have been used since the 1660s. The original crowns and scepters used for coronation were destroyed in the English Civil War. The queue took about forty minutes, and the exhibit probably took less than fifteen. Still, I loved getting to see all of the crowns and scepters along with baptism cups, the anointing cup, and even ceremonial banqueting dishes. I made sure to read every plaque available throughout the exhibit (fun note: all the plaques in the park had information in multiple languages). While in the queue, I learned that there was a fire in the Jewel house at one point and police broke out all of the jewels to save them from fire. Also, back in the early eighteenth century, people could pay an additional fee to hold the crowns until a women damaged the arches of the coronation crown.

The Beauchamp Tower had two stories that guests could visit. The first had a display about prisoners held at the Tower from early in its history until the 1950s. During WWII, the Tower was used as a prison for foreign spies. The second story of Beauchamp Tower is one of the prison cells open to the public. The space which is covered in etched graffiti is accessed by a narrow staircase. Most of the graffiti is of a religious nature with many imprisoned for Protestant beliefs during the reign of Queen Mary I and Catholicism during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. I was excited to note that I could read one of the Latin inscriptions on my own (nine years of Latin finally paid off!).

My favorite piece of graffiti was a piece with flowers representing the Dudley brothers. John Dudley was imprisoned in the tower 1553-1554 with his family for making Lady Jane Grey queen. Jane Grey is famously known for being Queen for only nine days. She was married off to Guildford Dudley, who is represented in the graffiti with gillyflowers, so that she could be a suitable queen for England. Dudley was of a group that wanted to remain in a Protestant England and instated Jane before Mary could establish herself as queen. However, Mary quickly overthrew Jane. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower herself and was beheaded by her cousin privately inside the tower walls. Her husband was one of the hundreds beheaded for a crowd outside the castle walls. Jane is one of the six beheadings to be preformed privately within the compound and one of twenty-two total executions; two other notable private beheadings would be wives 2 and 5 of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Kathrine Howard respectively. Two of these executions were preformed by a firing squad. I loved this detail because one of my favorite books is My Lady Jane which gives Jane Grey a happy ending. I was surprised to see how much the authors actually took from the real history.

The Bloody Tower had the coolest video projected onto the wall telling the mystery of the two princes who disappeared from the Tower of London. The Bloody Tower was also home to Sir Raleigh, the adventurer, and his family for over a decade; they were imprisoned as Raleigh had not had success during his missions but allowed to keep a herb garden and to live in relative comfort.

It was so cool to get to step back in time and experience such an important landmark in British history!

Fun fact: the Tower of London housed a zoo for a long time and there are wire statues around the premises to commemorate this. They also keep caged ravens on the grounds to ensure they do not fly away and doom the monarchy.