The Ceremony of the Keys: seven minutes to ten

At 21:53 the Chief Yeoman Warder steps out of the Byward Tower in a red watch coat, carrying a lantern lit with a single candle and the King's Keys. With an escort of soldiers he locks the outer and inner gates, and on the way back a sentry challenges him: 'Halt! Who comes there?' 'The Keys.' 'Whose keys?' 'King Charles's keys.' 'Pass, King Charles's keys. All's well.' As the clock strikes ten the Chief Warder raises his bonnet, calls 'God preserve King Charles', the guard answers 'Amen', a bugler sounds the Last Post, and the keys go to the King's House for the night. The formal locking began with Edward III in the 1340s after he walked into his own fortress unchallenged; Mary I wrote the rules for the keys in 1555; the Duke of Wellington fixed the time at ten in 1826. Tickets are free but must be booked with Historic Royal Palaces, and sell out months ahead.

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The Tower of London is a working fortress with a garrison, a governor and the Crown Jewels inside it, and every night it is locked. The locking is done in public, in a form that has hardened over centuries into a ceremony, and if you can get a ticket it is the best twenty minutes the Tower offers.

How it started

In December 1340 Edward III turned up at the Tower one night without warning and walked straight in. Nobody challenged him. The king, who was at war with France and touchy about security, imprisoned the Constable, Edward de la Beche, for dereliction of duty, ordered the castle locked at sunset and unlocked at sunrise, and made the Sheriffs of London pay for repairs. The formal locking of the gates dates from that bad night.

Mary I, nervous after the rebellions of 1554, tightened things further. Her orders of 1555 fixed the number of Yeoman Warders at not fewer than twenty-one, “discreet, trusty and personable” men between thirty and fifty, nine to patrol by day and six by night, and laid down exactly where the keys of the gates were to be kept: in a locked coffer, in the sight of the Constable, the Porter and at least two Yeoman Warders. That is the skeleton of what happens now.

The final touch was the Duke of Wellington’s. As Constable of the Tower in 1826 he replaced the vague “sunset” with a fixed time, ten o’clock, so that his soldiers would know when to be inside the walls.

What happens

At exactly seven minutes to ten the Chief Yeoman Warder comes out of the Byward Tower in the red watch coat and Tudor bonnet, carrying a lantern lit, still, with a single candle, and the King’s Keys. He walks along Water Lane to the archway of the Bloody Tower, where an escort of soldiers from the Tower garrison is waiting: two sentries, a sergeant and a man standing in for the drummer, who actually carries a bugle. The Chief Warder hands over the lantern and they march together to the outer gates.

The outer gates are shut, locked and checked, with the escort standing guard. Then the inner gates. On the way back, at the Bloody Tower arch, a sentry steps forward:

“Halt! Who comes there?” “The Keys.” “Whose keys?” “King Charles’s keys.” “Pass, King Charles’s keys. All’s well.”

The party passes through to the foot of the Broadwalk Steps, where the main guard is drawn up. The Chief Warder moves two paces forward, raises his bonnet high and says “God preserve King Charles.” The guard answers “Amen”, exactly as the clock strikes ten, and the bugler sounds the Last Post. The Chief Warder takes the keys up to the King’s House, hands them to the Resident Governor, and the guard is dismissed. The wording changes with the monarch; everything else does not.

The night it did not happen

Historic Royal Palaces says the ceremony has taken place “nearly every night” for seven centuries, and the qualification is honest. On 29 December 1940, at the height of the Blitz, the men who would have formed the escort were salvaging belongings from burning buildings, and the locking was called off. On another wartime night a bomb blast threw the escort off their feet mid-ceremony; they got up, dusted themselves down and finished, a little later than usual.

How to see it

Tickets are free, but they must be booked through Historic Royal Palaces and are often gone months in advance; the audience is admitted at 21:30 and stands on cobbles in the dark for about twenty minutes, then leaves. If the official tickets are sold out, some tour operators sell after-hours tours that end with the ceremony, at a considerable price for an hour or so of a Yeoman Warder’s company beforehand; we compare one on the tickets page. No photography is allowed during the ceremony, which is a rule worth keeping even if it were not one.