The White Tower and the Line of Kings

William the Conqueror began the great stone keep in the 1070s, in the corner of the Roman city wall, to dominate a London he had just conquered. Masons came from Normandy with stone from Caen; the labour was English. It took about twenty years and nothing like it had been seen in England. Henry III had it whitewashed in 1240, which is why it is the White Tower. Inside, the Chapel of St John is a nearly untouched Norman interior. Since the reign of Charles II the keep has also held the Line of Kings: royal armours on carved wooden horses, some by Grinling Gibbons, arranged as a parade of 'good' monarchs for the restored Stuart court. Henry VIII's armour is the star. It is the oldest museum display in the world, and it is still here, three floors up a spiral stair.

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Everything else at the Tower is an outer layer. Walls, towers, moat and gates were added over two centuries around one building, and that building was put up by a man who had just won a country and did not trust the people in it.

William, Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold at Hastings in October 1066 and was crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day. London, the biggest and richest town in his new kingdom, had submitted but not warmly. In the 1070s he began a stone keep in the south-east angle of the old Roman city wall, where it would command both the city and the river approach. Masons came from Normandy and brought their own stone with them, pale limestone from the quarries at Caen; the labour, as usual, was English. It took about twenty years. When it was finished it was the tallest secular building in the country, ninety feet to the battlements, with walls fifteen feet thick at the base, and there had never been anything like it in England. That was the point. It was built to be looked at, from a distance, by people who had lost.

In 1240 Henry III had the whole exterior whitewashed, and the name has stuck ever since.

Inside the keep

The entrance is on the first floor, up an external stair, as in every Norman keep: in a siege you pulled the stair away. Inside, the building is simpler than it looks from outside, two great rooms on each floor divided by a cross wall, with a spiral stair in each corner turret. The one thing you must not miss is on the second floor, at the south-east corner: the Chapel of St John the Evangelist, a small Norman church built into the keep, with round arches on heavy drum columns, a barrel-vaulted nave, a gallery above, and almost no decoration. It has been altered less than any other room in the Tower. Kings prayed here, and Mary I was betrothed to Philip of Spain by proxy here in 1554.

The Line of Kings

When Charles II came back from exile in 1660, the Tower’s armouries were opened to the public with two set-piece displays, and one of them is still here. The Line of Kings put royal armours on life-size carved wooden horses, each with a carved rider, in a parade of England’s monarchs from William the Conqueror down to the reigning king. It was propaganda in wood and steel: the kings included were the “good” ones, Edward III, Henry V, Henry VIII; the “bad” ones, Edward II, Richard III, were quietly left out. Some of the horses were carved by Grinling Gibbons and John van Nost, the best sculptors in the country. Visitors paid to walk along it from the 1680s. It moved to a new gallery beside the keep in 1826 and, after long exile in other museums, came back into the White Tower in the twenty-first century. The Royal Armouries call it the oldest museum display in the world, and it is hard to argue.

The star is Henry VIII’s armour of 1540, made at Greenwich for a king in his late forties who had grown, since his athletic youth, into something built like a wardrobe. Children like it for reasons that become obvious when they see the codpiece.

Getting up and down

The keep has no lift except one from the ground floor to the basement shop, and the spiral stairs bottleneck at weekends. If stairs are a problem this building is one to leave out, and the chapel and armour will keep for another visit. If they are not, go up to the top: the “Armoury in Action” floor is where children who have been dragged up three storeys suddenly find there are things to pull, lift and aim, and forget they were tired.