See Ming was in a meeting for the whole of today at the Chelsea Football Club, so I had the day to myself.
I decided to see the Tower of London because the guidebook said it was a place of England's gory and violent
royal history, which I know See Ming would not be interested in.
(All captions within quotes are taken from the official descriptions of the exhibits and sites at the Tower of London, Hay's Galleria
and the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms).
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Eleven o'clock, says the sundial outside the Tower Hill underground station. |
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The Tower of London turned out to be a castle, with twenty one towers within. It has served as a prison, a royal palace, a fortress and - even today - a place to keep the crown jewels. |
| The moat near the entrance is now an ice skating rink. |
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The Yeomen Warders (sometimes called Beefeaters), are officially members of the Queen's bodyguard. For the past 400 years, they have been giving guided tours at the Tower of London. |
| This one is called the Middle Tower even though it's the first one you'll see at the entrance. |
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The cylindrical tower to the right is the Bell Tower. This was where Sir Thomas More, kept prisoner for fourteen months. King Henry VIII made himself the supreme head of the Church of England breaking away from the Pope in Rome to annul his marriage to his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Sir Thomas refused to recognise Henry's claim as the head of church and was executed as a traitor. Henry went through five more wives in his search for male heirs - divorcing some and beheading others. Read about it on wikipedia. |
| St Thomas's Tower - the heart of the royal lodgings built by Henry III. Below this is Traitor's Gate - the watergate entrance through which prisoners were brought in by boats from the Thames. |
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| Some buildings and the scenery inside "the Tower". Many of these buildings are also called towers. |
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| The White Tower, the first tower built here by William the Conqueror - the first Norman king of England. Click here to read more about English Monarchs. |
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The Bloody Tower (the square one above the archway) was originally called the Garden Tower because it overlooked the constable's garden.
In the 16th century, it got its current name because of the murder of the little princes - Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. They were brought
to live in the Tower and went missing one night in 1483. Most people believe they were murdered on the order of their uncle, Richard III who
later became the king. Other prisoners included the famous courtier, explorer, writer, poet, philosopher and scientist Sir Walter Raleigh who conducted numerous experiments and wrote the first volume of The Historie of the World during his 13 year stay at the Bloody Tower. There's a small, steep flight of stairs up a pitch dark spiral that no tourists dared to climb. |
| "According to legend, if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the Tower will fall, and the Kingdom with it." |
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| The White Tower of today contains historic arms and armours from the Royal Armouries. |
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| Armour for jousting. The little catch on the armours right hand side is for resting the lance on, so that it isn't so easily knocked out of the hands. |
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The armour on the left is 6 ft 9 in tall and first listed in the inventory in 1660 as armour for John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, but is now believed to have been a gift from the Duke of Brunswick (North German) to Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I. The armour on the right is 37.5 in tall and is probably a trial piece for a lost armour of Charles I, but at earlier times were thought to have been either the armour of one of the murdered princes (Richard, Duke of York) or Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf of Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I. |
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The block and axe. 112 people were beheaded publicly outside the castle on nearby Tower Hill while 7 of the most important prisoners were executed within the Tower inself. The block was last used on Tower Hill in 1747. |
| The Chapel of St John the Evangelist. It served as a Chapel throughout the middle ages but from the 16th to 19th century, it was a storage place for records of state. |
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| More suits of armour on display. |
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"Armour used by the King's Champion
This armour was originally thought to have belonged to Edward, 1st Baron North, although the actual owner has never been satisfactorily identified. It was worn by the King's Champion at the coronation of George I in 1714, when he rode fully armed into the coronation banquet at Westminster Hall to challenge anyone who dared question the monarch's right to the crown. The armour was originally decorated with gilt bands; the gauntlets are restored." |
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Foot combat Armour of King Henry VIII. Henry was a great musician, dancer, and sportsman and participated actively in combat tournaments. This armour was made in 1540 when he was 49. By this time, his age, health and size limited his participation in tournaments. |
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A gun shield. |
| Breech-loading guns. Top one is dated 1537 and the bottom one is dated 1540. |
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"This armour is one of two presented to James I by Tokugawa Hidetada, Shogun of Japan, in 1613 and brought back from Japan by Captain John Saris of the East India Company. It forms part of a series of presentation armours of do-maru type, made in an archaic 13th-century style, which may be seen in many European collections." |
| Part of the suit of armour of Sir Christopher Hatton, who became one of Queen Elizabeth I's Gentlemen Pensioner's in 1564, captain of her bodyguard in 1572, and was knighted in 1577. Mary Queen of Scots accused him of being Elizabeth's paramour. He served on the commision for Mary's trial. |
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"Organ gun
Probably Dutch, late 17th century. Methods for firing several barrels at once had been tried at least since the 14th century. The name 'organ gun' is derived from the obvious similarities to the musical instrument." |
| Walking on one of the walls. |
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You really could spend a whole day at the Tower, but I decided to walk out to the Tower Bridge instead. |
| Along the Tower Bridge. For a small fee of 5.5 pounds, you can go to the Tower Bridge Exhibition and get a view of the river from the higher walkways, but I didn't do it, so I have no pictures to show. |
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Across the river from the Tower of London is the City Hall building, opened in 2002. How is that for contrast? |
| The view from the south side. |
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From here, everything on the north bank of the river apart from the Tower looks very modern. The strange one is the Swiss Re building, nicknamed 'the Gherkin'. |
| From here, you get a better idea of how the White Tower dominates the Tower of London. |
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Also on the south bank is the HMS Belfast - London's floating naval museum. |
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Hay's Galleria.
"In the mid 1850's, following the steady rise of the River Thames as the commercial lifeline of the City of London, Sir William Cubitt was commissioned to build a new wharf around an enclosed dock. Ships from all over the world visited the new Hay's Wharf but the most beautiful were the tea clippers from India and China. By the end of the century, over 80% of the perishable foodstuffs passed through the area which became known as the "Larder of London". The great Hay's Whard complex has been carefully restored to its former glory and those who visit the Galleria today stand on the same spot where the tall tea clippers edged their way into the dock 150 years ago." |
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The famous but unspectacular London Bridge. Nobody really knows what event or even which London bridge the nursery rhyme
"London bridge is falling down" actually refers to, since so many London bridges have been built here to replace the ones that have
fallen to disrepair, natural fires, storms, burning - one was even sold to an American oil tycoon!
Check wikipedia for the whole fascinating history.
The site of today's London bridge is some 30 metres west of the original one built by the Romans around 60 AD. |
| The Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast. Taken from the London bridge. |
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Before it got dark, I headed back to the hotel to meet See Ming and her colleagues since they invited me to join their tour of the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. The whole underground facility was really only open to the public from 1984 onwards. Prior to that, it was just a storage place for Government documents. |
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According to our guide, the entire place smelt quite bad during the war because of bad air circulation and primitive toilet facilities. He said you could still smell it to a certain extent today. It did smell funny but I didn't take a big whiff to confirm. |
| Cabinet Room. This room would have been full of cigarette and cigar smoke during War Cabinet meetings. The (red) steel girders were added to support a concrete layer that was put in place to help withstand a direct bomb hit. |
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| Right and below: Officers in the Map Room, charting and directing the course of the war. |
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| A map of Europe. Everything on the walls would have been left exactly the same as they were when the last officer turned off the lights and left the building after the war. |
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The Churchill Museum didn't have that many exhibits but you could read the many interesting facts about the man, his career and the war. |
| The tour ended with a dinner with See Ming's colleagues. Thanks for the great tour and the wonderful dinner! |
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