A Visit

Naturally, as a Brit, I have been to this place before.

The Tower of London beneath the City – I rather like the contrast.

It is a famous historical place nowadays dwarfed beneath the glass and steel of the City. Yes, you’ve probably guessed it is The Tower of London – those Ravens are a bit of a giveaway.

Left, walking along the battlements towards the Lanthorn Tower rebuilt by the Victorians. Right, view of the Shard from the Lanthorn Tower.

Many of us visit the Tower of London as part of a school trip or, as in my case, are taken by the parents.

And the four things I remember from my childhood visit are; it was a big, proper castle, the ravens were big too, the Crown Jewels were, well, crowns with big jewels and I was utterly bored by the seemingly endless display of armour in the White Tower.

Left, horse armour on display in the White Tower. Right, the White Tower. Early medieval building completed 1100 AD.

This time, as an ageing adult, I went to the Tower with a purpose. I wanted to walk through the space that Thomas Cromwell had known. I really should have done my research BEFORE this overpriced visit. The Royal Apartments, including the Great Hall, that were the backdrop to the ‘Tudor’ events at the Tower were originally rebuilt by Henry III in the 1220s and 1230s, but are now all long gone.

Most of the Tudor palace of the 16th century was demolished during an extensive remodelling in the 1660s and any remaining parts that had been incorporated into other buildings were lost during the 18th and 19th centuries when more rebuilding was carried out. However, there are still random sections of old wall extant. These would have formed part of the rooms where Katharine of Aragon stayed on the night before her coronation procession with Henry VIII in 1509.

From Traitors’ Gate, up the steps towards the Bloody Tower passing through the arch towards the White Tower. A section of old wall, part of the ruins of the Tudor Royal Apartments, is just visible in the bottom photograph.

These would be the same rooms where later in 1535 Thomas Cromwell would interrogate Thomas More, and where a year later Anne Boleyn would be held before her execution on 19th May 1536. And then later still, those same rooms would be where Thomas Cromwell would spend his last hours before he was beheaded on Tower Hill (outside the boundary of the Tower) on 28th July 1540.

Stone building to the left is the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula.

Interestingly, the bodies of Thomas More, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell were all buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, the parish church of the Tower. Their graves had no markers until the Victorians, undertaking renovations in 1876, found human remains. These remains were re-buried and marked with marble slabs (no photography is permitted in the church).

Both Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell were imprisoned during the time of Henry VIII and endured relatively short stays in the Tower unlike those incarcerated during the reign of Elizabeth I. The leading Catholic peer, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel was imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower for 10 years. Many of the ‘long stay’ prisoners left their mark as graffiti carving signs and symbols into the stone walls.

Graffiti attributed to Thomas Peverel 1570 including arms, shield of the Peverel family (a skull, damaged) and a cross with heart.

On the day of my visit I arrived just after the Tower had opened and their were no queues. I stayed over two hours and by the time I left it was very busy despite the pouring rain. I didn’t bother to queue to see the crown jewels again, but I did walk up (all 247 steps) and through the White Tower and traipsed past all the armour again (still boring). However, there were one or two gems like the first official guidebook to the Tower by John Hewitt printed in 1854.

The Tower: Its History, Armouries and Antiquities. John Hewitt. 1854.

And, down in the basement there was a rather delightful video installation featuring significant historical events with ravens flying through and across the centuries.

Stills from video installation in the White Tower.

The ravens in the video are luckier than the Tower’s resident living ones as they have their wings clipped to stop them flying away and spend most of their days caged.

Historical fiction, King Henry VIII and St James’s Palace

Last night the final episode of Wolf Hall left us in no doubt how terrifying it must have been to live at the court of King Henry VIII. The whole series, like the books (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies), has been an intriguing observation of power and the manipulation of power. But, unlike other 21st-century historical fictional accounts of the Tudors full of 21st-century people dressed in costumes essentially behaving in a very modern manner, the characters of Wolf Hall evoke another time. Perhaps it is nearer to a true Tudor sensibility. It somehow has a feel as though this re-presentation (hyphen deliberate) floats out from the documents, art and culture surviving from the period.

Last weekend I visited the ‘Real Tudors’ exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London and had the opportunity to scan across six different portraits of Henry VIII as I slowly turned on my heels. Putting the different styles and skills of the various artists aside, we are looking to find the essence of the monarch caught somewhere in the brushstrokes. As I stood and looked and looked, I realised how hard it is to see Henry the human being. The difficulty with these portraits is they are of a royal personage painted at a time when to be royal was to be almost a god. The other issue with these images is that some are copies of an original portrait or even copies of copies long lost in the last 500 years. In the end I considered we will only ever have an extremely mediated view of Henry and as with our contemporary queen, their public face is all about this strange, archaic notion of royalty and nothing to do with an ordinary human sitting for a portrait. I would show you these Henry portraits but, . . .

All the copyright rules and regulations to reproduce an image nearly 500 years old!! And, guess what, one of their aims is to ‘extend and broaden the range of audiences for the National Portrait Gallery’. See http://www.npg.org.uk/assets/files/pdf/corporate/busplan20132016.pdf

Wearing my Art Historian’s hat I find I have again to moan about access to public images held by a national art gallery. The National Portrait Gallery does not permit any photographs at all. In fact there are little signs here and there through the galleries reminding us not to take pictures. These images are part of a nation’s heritage and, of course, they are available to see and buy on their website, but that is not the same as taking my own shots.

St James’s Palace, Pall Mall, London.
Built as St James’s House by King Henry VIII. The original Chapel Royal, gatehouse tower, turrets and two Tudor rooms in the State apartments of this red brick building still survive.

At least we are still permitted (and we are very, very grateful) to photograph royal palaces from the street. During the period between 1531 and 1536 Henry VIII had St James’s House built (now known as St James’s Palace). The Wolf Hall drama is also partially set during these years and today we can stand in front of the original Tudor gatehouse and imagine Thomas Cromwell riding through these gates perhaps to speak with Anne Boleyn the day after she was crowned queen.

The Tudor gatehouse of St James’s Palace.