Her Majesty's Tower of London [antikvár]

The TOWER OF LONDONby Olwen HedleyAlthough the name 'Tower of London' has long been used to denote the whole of the great fortress and royal palace founded by King William I, 'the Conqueror', it belonged anciently to the central and most commanding feature, the keep. John Stow, the sixteenth-century antiquary, born and bred in the City of London, says in his Survey of London first published in 1598 that William, for the defence of the city, 'built this tower, which was the great square tower, now ca lied the White Tower'.William raised the tower to overawe as well as defend the city, tactics on which depended his sovereignty and the future of the realm. He himself was Duke of Normandy, cousin of the last Saxon king of England, Edward the Confessor, who died on 5 January 1066 and it was his landing on the Sussex shore and his victory at the Battle of Hastings on the following 14 October that brought him his new crown. Hastings was only the beginning of his triumph. The citizens of London showed disinclination to welcome him and not until December, when he had warily circled west and north of the capital, did their representatives meet him and 'from necessity submitted'. He in turn 'promised to be a kind lord to them': but he did not trust to agree-ments alone. Before entering London he sent a detachment ahead to begin erecting fortified posts and after his coronation in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day withdrew east to Bark-ing 'while certain strongholds were made in the town against the fickleness of the vast and fierce populace'.There were three, all banking on the Thames. Two, later known as Baynard's Castle and Montfichet Castle, stood in the west and have not survived. The third, the Tower of London, was placed at what was then the south-east corner of the City, immediately within the boun-dary wall built during the Roman occupation and restored by Alfred the Great in 885, a site of more than local importance. The Thames estuary hadfrom time immemorial been one of the chief inlets into Britain, and as London marks the lowest point at which the river can readily be bridged, the Tower commanded the eastern approaches both by water and by land and had full surveillance of the passage of ships.The Roman wall, parts of which are still preserved in the Tower precincts, formed the eastern and southern (or river) sides of what may initially have been a small garrison-fort, bounded on the west and north by a rampart and newly dug ditch. The work was directed by Gundulf, a monk of Bec in Normandy who became Bishop of Rochester and is remembered both for his able administration and for his personal sanctity. A later reference suggests that the iirst Constable may have been a Norman named Ravenger who died about 1086.Gundulf laid the foundations of the White Tower about 1078. It is a three-storeyed palace-keep with dressings of Caen stone, and its vaulted basement contains a well 40 feet deep. The beautiful tunnel-vaulted Chapel Royal of St John the Evangelist rising through the upper floor with its gallery, and above a crypt and sub-crypt, at its south-east corner dates from about 1080, but the Tower was still unfinished when William the Conqueror died seven years later at Rouen. His son William II, continued the work, which was com-pleted about 1097. The turreted White Tower, 90 feet high and with walls varying in thickness from fifteen feet at the base to eleven in the uppermost storey, stands today as the paramount memorial of the Norman Conquest, one of the most significant events in English history.The original entrance, on the first floor of the south front, facing the river, and reached by a wooden staircase, was reinstated in 1974. A later stone staircase had been demolished in the 17th century and the entrance made into a window, while a doorway in the north front was used instead. The White Tower is therefore again entered by theroute Gundulf planned and which he himself was concerned to render more formidable than hospitable. There are stone newel staircases in ali the angle turrets, three of which are square while the fourth, at the north-east corner, containing the principal staircase, is circular. Only this latter staircase makes the complete descent from the top storey to the basement. An additional staircase now provides access from the entrance floor to the chapel.Military requirements having been satisfied, Norman architecture had also to include a human dimension. On the first and second floors of the White Tower can still be seen the remains of the small privies in the thickness of the wall, some of which retain their original arched shoots on the outside.The name 'White Tower* commémorâtes the dazzlingartistry of Henry III, who in 1240 had the keep whitewashed both inside and out. He it was who began extension of the precincts into the squarish concentric fortess which today covers eighteen acres and endowed it with the full attributes of a royal palace. The Norman kings, who usually kept their seasonal ceremonial courts at Winchester, Westminster, Gloucester and, after 1110, Windsor, have not left any trace of the rich décoration which must once have adorned the great hall, chamber and chapel on the upper floor of the White Tower, although it was described by William Fitzstephen, the London-born monk of Canterbury who died in 1191, as ar x palatina, the fortress palace. William IFs brother, Henry I, had found a very different use for its vast stone apartments. On 15 August 1100, thirteen days after his accession, Henry arrested the late king's minister, Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, and on the advice of those around him, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates, had the bishop 'brought to the Tower of London and kept there'. Flambard was the first of a multitude of unfortunates who were to taste the rigours of the Tower as a state prison. Unlike most of them, he successfully made an unofficial