Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
During the
1381 Peasants' Revolt
, rioters broke into the Tower, dragged out the Lord High
Treasurer (the man responsible for the hated poll tax), and hacked him to death on Tower
Hill, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, the first of
cial beheading didn't
take place until 1388 with the last one in 1747, when the 80-year-old Jacobite
Lord Lovat
was dispatched. Lovat's beheading drew such a crowd that one of the spectators' stands
collapsed, killing several bystanders, at which Lovat exclaimed: “The more mischief, the
better sport.” The Duke of Monmouth, beheaded in 1685 for his rebellion against James II,
suffered the most botched execution: it took
Jack Ketch
(who lives on in Punch & Judy
shows) five blows of the axe to sever his head, and even then the job had to be finished off
with a surgeon's knife. Hangings continued for another thirty-odd years, ending with the
execution of two prostitutes and a one-armed soldier arrested for attacking a Catholic-run
pub in the 1780 Gordon Riots.
Tower Hill
Perhaps it's fitting that tra
c-blighted
Tower Hill
to the northwest of the Tower
should be such a god-awful place, for it was here that the Tower's convicted “traitors”
were executed. The actual spot for the executions, at what was the country's first
permanent scaffold, is marked by a plaque on the west side of Trinity Square
Gardens, which names a handful of the 125 executed here.
Close by stands the
Mercantile Marine Memorial
, designed by Edwin Lutyens,
smothered with the names of the 12,000 merchant seamen who died in World War I,
and subsequently enlarged with a vast, sprawling sunken section commemorating the
24,000 more who died in World War II.
The marine theme is continued in the buildings overlooking the gardens: the
gargantuan temple-like former headquarters of the
Port of London Authority
(now a
hotel), an Edwardian edifice that exudes imperial confidence, with Neptune adorning
the main tower; and, to the east, the elegant Neoclassical former headquarters of
Trinity House
(tours can be booked; £8;
T
020 7481 6900,
W
trinityhouse.co.uk), the
organization that oversees the upkeep of the lighthouses of England, Wales, the
Channel Islands and Gibraltar - check out the reliefs of mermen, cherubs and
lighthouses on the main facade, and the splendid gilded nautical weather vane.
Continuing east, you'll find perhaps the most impressive remaining section of
London's
Roman walls
(see p.169) behind the
Grange City Hotel
, on Cooper's Row,
and in Wakefield Gardens, close to Tower Hill tube station, along with an eighteenth-
century copy of a Roman statue of Emperor Trajan, saved from a Southampton
scrapyard by a local vicar.
12
Tower Bridge
Daily: April-Sept 10am-6pm; Oct-March 9.30am-5.30pm • £8 •
T
020 7403 3761,
W
towerbridge.org.uk •
!
Tower Hill
Tower Bridge
ranks with Big Ben as the most famous of all London landmarks.
Completed in 1894, its neo-Gothic towers are clad in Cornish granite and Portland
stone, but conceal a frame of Scottish steel, which, at the time, represented a
considerable engineering achievement, allowing a road crossing that could be raised to
give tall ships access to the upper reaches of the Thames. The raising of the bascules
(from the French for “seesaw”) remains an impressive sight, and an event that takes
place around a thousand times a year - visit the website for details. If you buy a ticket
for the Tower Bridge Exhibition, you get to walk across the elevated walkways linking
the summits of the towers, and visit the Tower's Engine Rooms, on the south side of
the bridge, where you can see the now-defunct, giant coal-fired boilers which drove the
hydraulic system until 1976, and play some interactive engineering games.
