Tower of London

Travel:
The nearest tube is Tower Hill on the Circle and District Lines or you can use a river pleasure boat.

Open:
1st March - 31st October, Mon - Sat, 9am-5pm
Sun 10am - 5pm

1st November - 28th February, Tues - Sat, 9am-4pm
Sun and Mon 10am-4pm

Closed:
24th, 25th and 26th December and 1st January

The White Tower, Tower of London, Unesco World Heritage Site, London Photographic Print
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Originally built by William the Conqueror to subdue and intimidate the local population, the oldest part of this medieval fortress dates from 1078. It was built to withstand attack and siege. The White Tower, in the centre of the fortification, has walls that are 15 feet thick at the bottom tapering to 11 feet in width at the top.

Although used by royalty as a residence, the Tower also has a dark and bloody history. It was here that the little princes were said to have been murdered on the orders of their uncle, Richard III. The building where their dead bodies were discovered was called the Garden Tower but thereafter was known as the Bloody Tower. In the same period Richard's brother, the Duke of Clarence, was tried and found guilty of treason. He was imprisoned in the Tower and died there. He was said to have been drowned in a vat of Malmsey.

Perhaps Henry VIII is most responsible for the Tower's infamous image. His second wife, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded on Tower Green as was his fifth wife, Catherine Howard.

It wasn't only inconvenient wives that were executed in the Tower during Henry VIII's reign. Because he wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn and the Pope would not annul the marriage, he split from the Church of Rome. English priests were required to swear an Oath of Supremacy to the new Church of England and Henry's position as the head of it. Some refused. Amongst these were Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who were both imprisoned in the Tower and then executed. Thomas More was told that the King had decided to be merciful and More would not be hung, drawn and quartered as a traitor but instead would be beheaded. He said, "God forbid the King shall use any more such mercy on any of my friends."

Even Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chancellor and one of his closest advisors, became expendable in 1540. He had risen from humble beginnings, his father was a blacksmith, to become one of the highest in the land. This did not protect him, however. He was first imprisoned in the Tower and then beheaded there.

Executions and imprisonment in the Tower of London continued for about a further 200 years.

The Imperial State Crown from the Present Day Crown Jewels

On 9th May 1671, Colonel Thomas Blood made his audacious attempt to steal the Crown Jewels kept in the Martin Tower on the inner wall of the Tower.

He had arranged to see the Jewels with his son and friend, Robert Perot. They overpowered the Jewel House keeper and then tied him up. Even so the keeper continued to struggle so they hit him and stabbed him.

The gang proceeded to take what they came for. They were not fussy about damaging the Crown Jewels either. Captain Blood crushed the Imperial State Crown and so that he could hide it under his cloak while his son started to saw the Sceptre in half. Robert Perot concealed the Orb his breeches.

They thought they were going to succeed with their daring robbery but the keeper's son returned unexpectedly and raised the alarm.

Captain Blood was arrested but somehow he managed to elude justice. For no apparent reason, King Charles II not only pardoned him but also him a pension. Very strange.

As a consequence of the attempted robbery, security was tightened, iron bars replaced the wooden ones around the Crown Jewels and visitors were no longer allowed to handle them.

Beefeaters, Tower of London Art Print
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The Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London has taken place every night for 700 years. It has taken place regardless of Civil War, plague, fire and World Wars.

For centuries the Tower was a royal palace and locking up was once essential for the protection of the reigning monarch and members of the court. Now, of course, there are the Crown Jewels to protect.

Interest Facts about the Ceremony of the Keys

* The Tower has served many functions over the centuries - Royal Palace, Royal Mint and home to the Crown Regalia - all of which made security a high priority. Thus, it was necessary to secure the building from dusk until dawn. Originally the Gentleman Porter would use an armed escort of soldiers to make his way through the grounds locking all possible entrances. These days the Chief Yeoman Warder is responsible.

* When the Duke of Wellington became Constable of the Tower in 1826 he altered the start time because it allowed the garrison some free time out on the town.

* The ceremony lasts just seven minutes. At precisely 21.53 the Chief Yeoman Warder, carrying the Keys of the Tower in one hand and a brass lantern in the other, collects his escort from the main body of the guard on duty within the Tower and proceeds to the entrance to secure the heavy wooden gates.

* The earliest known reference to the ceremony is contained in Regulations for the Officers and Servants Civil and Military which was issued by Mary Tudor on 12th October 1555.

* It is thought the ceremony is at least 700 years old and has certainly occurred every night without fail for many years. During the Second World War several bombs fell on the Tower. In September 1941 it is recorded that following a direct hit the ceremony had to be delayed by half an hour but it still went ahead.

* The lantern that the Chief Yeoman Warder carries to light his way was presented to the Tower as a token of friendship by the Honourable Artillery Company on 12th May 1919.

* Nobody is sure when the public were first allowed to watch the ceremony but these days it is allowed almost every night. However no one is admitted without a date stamped ticket.

* To attend you should apply to the Ceremony of the Keys Office, HM Tower of London, London EC3N 4AB. Get full information on applying for a ticket the Tower of London website.

Beefeater, Tower of London Art Print
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Once called the Yeomen of the Guard, originated as a Royal Bodyguard to Edward IV in the late 15th century. Today Yeoman Warders have all served at least 22 years in the British armed forces with an honourable record. Currently, warders have served in Northern Ireland, the Falklands War, Bosnia, the first and second Gulf wars and in Afghanistan so don't think they are a lot of old fogeys!

It is bad form to call them Beefeaters. Their nickname is said to come from when they served as royal bodyguards. One of their privileges was allowing them to eat as much beef as they wanted from the king's table.

A Yeoman Warder tour is one of the most popular attractions for visitors to the Tower. These take place every 30 minutes until 3.30pm in summer and 2.30pm in winter. Each tour takes about an hour and is included in the cost of admission.

Anne Boleyn Giclee Print
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By rights, Tower Green should be one of the most haunted places in the fortress because it was here that executions took place. Now visitors can see an evocative memorial to the people who died here by order of the state. On it is inscribed:

"Gentle visitor pause awhile : where you stand death cut away the light of many days : here jewelled names were broken from the vivid thread of life : may they rest in peace while we walk the generations around their strife and courage : under there restless skies."

A few privileged people were executed inside the Tower in private especially if they were popular with Londoners. For the rest, they had a public execution.

Two of King Henry VIII's unfortunate wives are the best-known of those beheaded here. They were Anne Boleyn, his second wife and Catherine Howard, his fifth wife. Perhaps the King still had some love left for Anne Boleyn as she was executed by the clean stroke of an expert swordsman specially imported from France.

Lady Jane Grey is Beheaded at the Tower of London on Charges of High Treason Giclee Print
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The other famous woman to be executed on Tower Green was Lady Jane Grey, aged only sixteen. She was unfortunate enough to be a pawn in the hands of people who put her on the throne after the death of Henry VIII's son, who became King Edward VI on the death of his father. Succession should have passed to Henry's daughter, Mary, a devout Roman Catholic. Poor Lady Jane Grey was Queen for just nine days. She and some of her supporters were tried and found guilty of high treason, the penalty for which was death. Lady Jane Grey went to her death with great dignity. Before she knelt in front of the block, she said to the crowd:

"Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day."

Kneeling with her head on the block, Lady Jane said, "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Lady Jane Grey Queen for Nine Days is Beheaded
at the Tower of London on Charges of Treason Giclee Print
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With its long history as a royal palace, a prison and a place of execution, it is natural that legends of ghosts would abound.

* In the middle of the 13th century, the ghost of Thomas à Becket was seen while the inner curtain wall was being built. His ghost is said to have struck it with his cross, so destroying it. Of course, this could be just an excuse for shoddy workmanship thought up by inventive, medieval cowboy builders!

* Of all the deaths at the Tower of London, that of the little princes is probably the most infamous. Said to have been murdered in 1483 at the instigation of his uncle, Richard III, they were aged just 9 and 12. Sightings of them have occasionally occurred in the Bloody Tower. Witnesses say they were dressed in white nightshirts and simply stand holding hands before fading from sight.

* The most traumatic ghost for witnesses must be that of the 70-year-old Countess of Salisbury - "The last of the Plantagenets" - executed by Henry VIII for political reasons. Instead of going meekly to her death on the block, she tried to flee from the executioner. He chased her and repeatedly struck her with his axe until she was dead. Witnesses say they have seen this grisly drama replayed with a shadow of the axe hanging over the area.

* Another of the most famous deaths was that of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn. She has been seen by many people who have described her as headless and going from the Queen's House to the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula leading a procession of dignitaries down the aisle to the site of her final burial place under the chapel's altar.

* The Tower of Salt is probably the scariest place in the Tower of London. Dogs won't go in and Yeoman of the Guard (Beefeaters) don't like to go in after dusk since one of them was nearly strangled by something unseen.

Beefeater in Costume at the Tower
of London, London Photographic Print
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* Another woman executed during the Tudor period was Lady Jane Grey who was last seen in 1957 by two Guardsmen on the anniversary of her execution, exactly 403 years after her death. The two witnesses described a white shape "forming itself on the battlements".

* A rifleman claimed, at his court-martial, the reason he was found unconscious at his post was that a white figure approached him. He issued the traditional three challenges of "Who goes there?" and, on receiving no answer, he attacked the figure with his bayonet which went straight through. Two witnesses said they had witnessed the incident from the Bloody Tower so he was acquitted. Personally, I would like to know if the witnesses were his good friends before believing this story.

* Ghosts at the Tower of London are not restricted to humans. In January 1815 a sentry saw a bear coming out of a doorway of the Martin Tower. He attacked it with his bayonet which, like the incident described above, went right through. He was also found unconscious and died, two days later, of fright, it is said.

* A recent haunting appeared to have been captured in a photograph when a photographer on a shoot for a magazine became increasingly uneasy when flashes went off unexpectedly and bulbs blew for no reason. He was horrified to discover later when they were developed that many were blank and one contained an unexplainable ball of white light which seemed to explode in the centre of the picture. The photographer was convinced that there was a supernatural explanation and vowed never to return to the Tower of London.

Raven (Corvus Corax), Tower of London, London Photographic Print
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There is a legend that says the kingdom and the Tower will fall if the six resident ravens ever leave the fortress. Just to be on the safe side, they are looked after very carefully and one of the posts in the Tower of London is that of Ravenmaster.

John Flamsteed, the king's astronomer, complained that the ravens impeded the work of his observatory in the White Tower. Charles II dismissed his complaints and is said to have been the first monarch to insist that the ravens of the Tower should be protected.

To keep the ravens at home in the Tower, they have one wing clipped. This isn't a foolproof system, though, and sometimes they go missing. Just as bad, some of them are miscreants who have to be fired. One was dismissed for eating television aerials and another was last seen outside an East End pub.

Just to make sure the number of ravens never falls below the required number, there are seven ravens - in other words the necessary six plus a spare. Their lodgings are to be found next to the Wakefield Tower.

You might think they are perfectly safe and accustomed to visitors. In fact, they can and do bite if people get too close - don't forget they can't escape a perceived threat by flying away. For this reason, visitors are warned not to approach them nor to try and feed them.

Edward V and Richard Duke of York Entering the Tower of London Giclee Print
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Was King Richard III a bloodstained murderer or the victim of Tudor black propaganda to justify Henry VII (formerly Henry Tudor) seizing the throne?

If you've read Shakespeare's Richard III, you will know that he is supposed to have drowned his brother, the Duke of Clarence, in a butt of Malmsey wine. Unfortunately, it appears Richard had no alibi because, not only was he in the Tower of London at the time of the murder, he also benefited from the death.

The most heinous of Richard's alleged crimes is the murder of his young nephews, now known as 'the Princes in the Tower'. Their father and Richard's brother, King Edward IV died April 1483 leaving his 12-year-old son as his successor to the throne. Richard declared himself protector of the realm until the boy came of age.

At that time, the coronation procession set out from the Tower to Westminster Abbey so the two young brothers stayed there, it was supposed, in the Royal Apartments. Just three months later, however, it was Richard who was crowned king, not his nephew. The two boys seem to have mysteriously disappeared, it was said.

Almost 200 years later in 1674, the skeletons of two boys of the right ages were discovered during building works.

For centuries, there has been a debate about the guilt or innocence of Richard III. He was a popular king, especially in the north of England, and brought in some valuable reforms. How does this square with the character of a child murderer? Unfortunately, it's too late for CSI to magically provide us with the solution to this centuries old mystery.

The Tower of London in 1597 when torture was practiced there.

The Tower of London is infamous as a grim fortress in which, over the centuries, hundreds of prisoners suffered and died. Of all the many uses to which the Tower of London has been put, torture has attracted the largest body of myth and legend, and it has come to dominate the image of the Tower of London in the popular imagination. Behind the legend is a true story, and many of the details of torture in the Tower are well-documented by reliable sources.

Actually torture only occupied a relatively short period of the castle's history, from the 16th to the 17th centuries, and of the prisoners who have passed through the Tower, only a tiny fraction were ever tortured.

It is no coincidence that the period during which torture occurred at the Tower was one of religious upheaval in England and the Government used every available method to gather information and so torture became a matter of state policy.

It must be remembered that torture was essentially a matter of gathering information to be used in Law, not a matter of punishing prisoners. In many cases, the victims were deemed to be guilty already, and the aim was not to extract a confession but to find out about co-conspirators, safe-houses, the routes of letters and so on. In the reign of James I, Sir Francis Bacon wrote: "...in the highest cases of treasons, torture is used for discovery, and not for evidence."

Torture has never been officially recognised in English Law as a means of gaining information. The officers who tortured prisoners in the Tower were acting with the knowledge and authority of the highest levels of Government, the Privy Council and the Monarch. Critics claimed that torture was ineffective as well as cruel, and that a man on the rack would say anything to be released. From the mid 17th century onwards, torture was effectively abandoned.

Other Methods of Coercing Prisoners
Apart from the instruments themselves, there were other ways of assuring cooperation, such as the very close confinement afforded by a truly tiny cell. In the Tower, the notorious chamber known as 'Little Ease' measured just 1.2m square (4sq ft), and its cramped conditions prevented the prisoner from ever finding a comfortable position. There has been much speculation about the location of Little Ease, although the truth may never be known for certain.

As part of their interrogation, many prisoners were subjected to threats and intimidation - another form of torture, though this time at the discretion of the Lieutenant and Warders. The authorities played on the prisoners' fear: for example, the clerk of the Council introduced John Gerard to 'the master of torture', but Gerard later found out that this was a trick to frighten him, and the man was in fact an artillery officer in the Tower.

Cuthbert Simpson on the Rack at the Tower of London Giclee Print
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The Torturers
A certain amount of information has survived about the individuals who actually tortured prisoners in the Tower. There is an important distinction between those who operated the instruments, and those who questioned the prisoners during each session. The Warders of the Tower, under the command of the Lieutenant, saw to the physical business of torture. The interrogations themselves were carried out by two or three Commissioners, usually including at least one law officer, such as the Royal Attorney or Solicitor.

One of the most notorious Commissioners was 'Norton the Rackmaster' Thomas Norton, MP and Recorder of London, who interrogated prisoners in the late 1570s and early 1580s. On his death in 1584 he was replaced by Richard Topcliffe, who operated as an interrogator all over England. Topcliffe was fanatically anti-Catholic but held no formal office, and appears to have carried out much of the torturing in person.

While Topcliffe and Norton took to their jobs with relish, other officers found the duty an unpleasant one. John Gerard later heard that Sir Richard Berkeley resigned as Lieutenant, not wishing to be involved in torture again.

Over the centuries, many people were tortured in the Tower of London. Below are the stories of just a few of them.

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plotters

Guy Fawkes, from "Peeps into the Past," Published circa 1900 Giclee Print
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Perhaps the most famous prisoner known to have been tortured at the Tower of London, Guy Fawkes was the best known of the Gunpowder Plotters who tried to blow up Parliament and kill the Protestant King James I in 1605.

When Guido 'Guy' Fawkes and his fellow-conspirators were arrested, James I did not hesitate to insist upon torture: 'the gentler Tortures are to be first used upon him et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur [and then make them worse and worse in stages] and so God spede your good work' (6th November 1605)

Fawkes was allegedly shown the rack, but he may have confessed without it. Other accounts suggest that he was tortured by being hung from the manacles.

The scrawl of his signature on one of his confessions shows that his interrogation had certainly not been 'gentle.' By 8 November Fawkes was beginning to talk, revealing details of the plot and giving names and so all the other conspirators, who had left London, were rounded up. Fawkes was interrogated for three days, and signed a confession each night.

In the end, Fawkes was hung, drawn and quartered at Westminster in 1607 and the rest is history...

Fawkes' co-conspirator, Ambrose Rochewood, has left his inscription on the walls of the Martin Tower in the Tower of London.

Anne Askew

Anne Askew, Brought Before a Catholic Bishop for Examination Giclee Print
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Anne Askew was born in Lincolnshire in 1521 when England was a Catholic country. She was a supporter of Martin Luther, giving sermons and distributing banned Protestant books. She was arrested in 1546 and the Lieutenant of the Tower of London was ordered to torture Anne in an attempt to force her to name other Protestants.

It is the only reported instance of a woman being tortured in the Tower. In her own words, when she refused to name others who shared her beliefs... "Then they did put me on the rack because I confessed no ladies or gentlewomen to be of my opinion, and thereon they kept me a long time. And because I lay still and did not cry, my Lord Chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead...Then the Lieutenant caused me to be loosed from the rack: incontinently I swooned, and then they recovered me again..."

After a long period Anne still refused to give names or to recant. Her body was so badly damaged that she had to be carried to her trial. Found guilty of being a Protestant, she was condemned to death and burnt at the stake at Smithfield in 1546.

Father John Gerard
John Gerard was one of many Catholic priests who were imprisoned and tortured in Elizabeth I's Protestant England. He has left the most detailed account of being tortured in the Tower. On two occasions in April 1597, Gerard was suspended by manacles to make him disclose the routes by which letters were being brought to England from Jesuits in the Low Countries and Spain.

Gerard was held in the Salt Tower at the Tower of London and tortured on three separate occasions by William Waad, later Lieutenant of the Tower.

Gerard revealed nothing and his confession is signed, so he could still write, though he later said he had lost the use of his fingers. A surviving transcript of his examination contains almost no useful information and he later escaped from the Tower of London.