Tower of London

Tower of London, royal fortress and London landmark. Its buildings and grounds served historically as a royal palace, a political prison, a place of execution, an arsenal, a royal mint, a menagerie, and a public records office. It is located on the north bank of the River Thames, in the extreme western portion of the borough of Tower Hamlets, on the border with the central City of London.

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Immediately after his coronation (Christmas 1066), William I the Conqueror began to erect fortifications on the site to dominate the indigenous mercantile community and to control access to the Upper Pool of London, the major port area before the construction of docks farther downstream in the 19th century. The central keep—known as the White Tower—was begun about 1078 close inside the old Roman city wall and was built of limestone from Caen in Normandy. During the 12th and 13th centuries the fortifications were extended beyond the city wall, the White Tower becoming the nucleus of a series of concentric defenses enclosing an inner and an outer ward.

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The inner “curtain” has 13 towers surrounding the White Tower, of which the best known are the Bloody Tower, the Beauchamp Tower, and the Wakefield Tower. The outer curtain is surrounded by the moat, originally fed by the Thames but drained since 1843. The wall outside the moat has embrasures for cannons; beside them, modern artillery pieces are fired ceremonially on state occasions. The whole complex of buildings covers 18 acres (7 hectares). The only entrance from the land is at the southwest corner, from the City; when the river was still a major highway of London, the 13th-century watergate was much used. Its nickname, Traitors’ Gate, derives from the prisoners brought through it to the Tower, which was long used as a state prison. The armouries that now occupy the White Tower, as well as a later 17th-century brick building alongside, house arms and armour from the early Middle Ages to modern times. Much of this collection, which is administered as the Royal Armouries, was moved to a new museum site in Leeds in 1996.

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A Royal Vocabulary Quiz

The Tower was a royal residence until the 17th century, and from the 13th century to 1834 it housed the Royal Menagerie (the Lion Tower). In the Middle Ages the Tower of London became a prison and place of execution for politically related crimes, with most captives being put to death (murdered or executed) on Tower Green or, outside the castle, in public on Tower Hill. Among those killed there were Sir Simon Burley (in 1388), an adviser and tutor of Richard II; the statesman Edmund Dudley (1510); the humanist Sir Thomas More (1535); the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn (1536); Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley (1554); and the 11th Lord Lovat, Simon Fraser (1747), who was a Scottish Jacobite leader. During World War I several spies were executed there by firing squad. Other notable inmates included Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I), who was briefly imprisoned by Mary I for suspicion of conspiracy; the soldier and conspirator Guy Fawkes; the adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh; and Sir Roger Casement, who was arrested for treason during World War I. In 1483 the adolescent king Edward V and his younger brother were last seen in the Tower before their disappearance and probable murder.

Until 1994 the British crown jewels and regalia were kept in the underground Jewel House; they are now housed in a more spacious aboveground facility. During the 1990s restoration work was carried out in various parts of the Tower, notably in the medieval apartments in Wakefield and St. Thomas’s towers.

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A military garrison is maintained within the Tower, which with its precincts constitutes a “liberty” outside local jurisdictions. It is held for the sovereign by a constable, who is now always a field marshal. There is a resident governor, who occupies the 16th-century Queen’s House on Tower Green and is in charge of the yeoman warders, or “beefeaters,” as they are popularly called. They still wear a Tudor uniform and live within the Tower, and their responsibilities include guiding tours for the Tower’s two million to three million annual visitors. Ravens with clipped wings are kept on the grounds by the yeoman ravenmaster; a tradition dating from the time of King Charles II (reigned 1660–85) states that, should the ravens leave the Tower, the fortification and the state would fall. By the Tower is Tower Bridge (1894), the only central-city bridge across the Thames below London Bridge. The fortress was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988.