Welcome to the famous Tower of London!

We went to the Tower of London today because we heard so many cool stories about it. The Tower also had a display in the moat of more than a thousand ceramic poppies to commemorate the soldiers who lost their lives in the First World War, which we wanted to learn more about.

The first building we visited is the one that houses the Crown Jewels. It was actually a vault, with huge, thick metal doors which looked really heavy. The crowns, sceptres, and orbs were there from quite a few past monarchs of England.  I knew about these items after watching Elsa’s coronation in the movie “Frozen” and King George the sixth’s coronation in the movie “The King’s Speech“. Along with these items, known as the regalia, were solid gold salt dishes, spoons, goblets, swords with jewelled scabbards, a baptismal font, and even a big gold punch bowl that was so big, it could hold 144 bottles of wine! This room was amazing with all the precious metals and jewels in it,  there’s no wonder why it is so carefully guarded.

Since we couldn’t take pictures in the vault, I took a picture of the sign outside.

The building that the Crown Jewels are housed in.

Now for a little bit of history. In 1066, William the Conquerer crossed the English Channel into England, where he built the Tower of London on the site that had once been a city ruled by the Romans called Londinium. It was here that William built William’s Keep, also known as the White Tower, because it was regularly white-washed. The keep was built to frighten Londoners and to control trade, since London was a very important trading place. I think that William the Conquerer was very smart to have built the beginning of the Tower in such a strategically defensive way. For example, to get to the door, you have to climb wooden stairs.  If an enemy was trying to get into the Tower, the stairs could be cut away or burned.  Since it was so fortified, it was used mainly as a stronghold and a prison. The first prisoner was held in the Tower in 1100, but the prisoner escaped the next year!

The ruins of a Roman wall that was part of Londinium.

The White Tower built by William the Conquerer.

There have been many prisoners who were kept in the Tower, but not many were actually executed inside it. The people who were executed in the Tower were important, like Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife to King Henry the eighth, who had her trial and was imprisoned for 2 weeks until she was beheaded. Another famous queen executed in the Tower was Lady Jane Grey. Her reign lasted 9 days, but she was thrown in the Tower along with her husband. Before her own death, her husband was beheaded and Lady Jane saw the headless body before being led away. When she died, Lady Jane Grey was only 16 years old.

Another sad story is the tale of two brothers who were both princes next in line to the throne, Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. Their uncle, King Richard the third, wanted to be king and the two boys were the only people in his way. They were last seen in the Tower, and no one knew what happened to them. When some workers were digging around the Tower later in the 1600’s, 2 small corpses were found, but there was no DNA testing to determine the identities. This story is not proven, and I hope that it isn’t true. Probably the worst part of this whole story: the boys were only 9 and 12 years old.  There have been  many movies about this history mystery, including a popular one starring Laurence Olivier based upon the play by William Shakespeare.

This is a place steeped in history, with torture, sieges, imprisonment, and many other horrors.  But that is our history.  These are the things we should remember so that we can learn from our ancestors mistakes, and never repeat these terrible things.  Like the famous quote says, “Those who fail to learn their history are destined to repeat it”.  Let’s not repeat this.