Tower of London [antikvár]

HistoryAlmost from the beginning, at the time of the Norman Conquest, this royal castle in London (then taking the place of Winchester as the principal royal city in the realm) has been known not as London Castle but as the Tower of London, because of the great White Tower which dominated it and still does. The foundation of the castle, however, comes before the building of the great tower within it a decade or so later, and most probably occurred in the very year of the Conquest and as part and parcel of the Norman occupation of London in the winter of 1066. After his victory at Hastings on October 14, the Conqueror made a slow, intimidating and circuitous advance upon London, founding castles as he went, via Dover, Canterbury, Winchester, Walling-ford (where he crossed the Thames) and Little Berkhampstead. Here, at a date which must already have been in December, the chief men of the city and many of the surviving English magnates came in to submit to him, and the Norman duke, according to William of Poitiers his biographer, sent an advance party to the city to construct a castle within it and to make preparations for his triumphal entry. Again, the same writer tells us that, after his coronation in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, the new king withdrew to Barking 'while certain fortifications were completed in the city against the restlessness of the huge and brutal populace. For he [William] realized that it was of the first importance to overawe the Londoners'. In these events we may properly see both theuse of castles by the Normans to impose their rule upon the conquered kingdom and, more particularly, the founding of the future 'Tower of London' together with, in all probability, the other two early Norman castles in the cityBaynard's Castle, in the south-west angle, and the castle of Monfichet to the north of it (near Ludgate Circus).The new royal castle was at first evidently an enclosure within the south-east angle of the then surviving Roman city walls (cf Porchester) whose existing strength it utilized to east and south as well as the defence and access provided by the Thames (Fig 2). Recent excavations by the Department of the Environment have revealed due south of the White Tower a section of the fourth-century Roman river-wall, including the hitherto unexplained re-entrant which has determined the line of the south curtain of the castle in this area ever since. Earlier excavations in 1964 and 197475 had already discovered, respectively north and southwest of the White Tower, early ditches which must represent the first enclosure of the Norman castle within the city walls. The first of these ditches, 8m wide by 3.5m deep, is no longer visible but ran from a point on the eastern Roman city wall just north of the White Tower, in a southwesterly direction to turn south towards the river at a point roughly opposite the present Bloody Tower. The other ditch, which is not quite aligned with the first, may still be seen at the western foot of the later Main Guard Wall, running in a northerly directionHISTORYTOWER OF LONDON 5