The Norman Tower of London (the White Tower)

The Norman ‘Great Tower’ remains at the centre of the Tower of London. The onion-dome turret roofs were added by Henry VIII as preparation for the 1533 coronation of Anne Boleyn, and the original window and door surrounds have been altered.

London was established by the Romans in the first century AD and it became the capital of their province of Britannia. In the 3^rd century, about 150 years after Londinium’s foundation, the east coast of the province was coming under attack by Franks from the Rhineland area of the Continent. To protect Londinium, the Romans built a defensive wall around the city. It eventually encircled the entire conurbation, including along the riverside.

Centuries later, the wall was of great importance to the siting of the Tower of London. The Tower was built in what had been the south-east corner of the former Roman city and below it there are the foundations of Roman buildings. Ancient skeletons, even dating from before the Roman period, as well as Roman artefacts, have been discovered below the castle during building work.

Following the departure of the Roman army to defend Rome itself in the early 5^th century, Londinium was largely abandoned for the next 400 years. The defensive wall most likely disintegrated and many of its stones re-used elsewhere. The town was eventually revived under King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) in the 9^th century. It was then under constant threat from Vikings so the defensive wall would have been refortified in that period.

In October 1066 William, Duke of Normandy defeated the Saxon King Harold II and England became part of his Norman domain. It was one thing to be victorious in battle, but that was quite different from occupying an entire nation and subduing a hostile population. It was achieved by creating castles throughout the country, of which the Tower of London was one, to both defend themselves and to intimidate and subdue the Saxon people.

By the time of the conquest, London was the most populous and prosperous city in England. Westminster, nearly two miles to the south-west of London, was the location of a royal palace and a centre of political power, as well as Edward the Confessor’s great abbey.

The people of London were not going to easily submit to the foreign invader. Upon the death of Harold, they instead chose their own new leader, Edgar the Aetheling. William found London to be too well defended to enter from the south across London Bridge. Instead, he marched his troops west through Hampshire and Berkshire, burning towns and villages as they went and murdering the inhabitants. The army crossed the Thames upriver at Wallingford from where it could approach London along the north bank of the Thames. The reign of terror the Normans inflicted along the way had the desired effect. Londoners sent a delegation to pledge their allegiance to William.

Distrustful of the population of 10,000 Londoners who claimed allegiance, however, William ordered that, before he ventured near the city, fortresses be built for his protection. Three were duly erected: two in the west of the city and one in the south-east.

William was crowned King of England at Edward the Confessor’s newly-built Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, although it resulted in fighting between William’s men and the crowd of local people who had gathered. William withdrew to Barking in Essex “while certain strongholds were made in the city against the fickleness of the vast and fierce population”.

Baynard’s Castle shortly before its destruction in the Great Fire of 1666.

Baynard’s Castle was built inside the city wall, where the wall met the Thames in the south-west, just behind what is now Blackfriars station. It was built for Ralph Baignard, one of William’s supporters. There is an account that King Cnut had stayed at that place in 1017, so the Norman castle may have been built on earlier foundations.

Baynard’s Castle was destroyed and rebuilt several times. During the 13^th century the original site was used to create the Dominican Blackfriars priory and the castle was rebuilt on the riverside slightly to the east. In the 15^th century ownership passed to the Crown, used as a residence for members of the Royal Family, and it was the official home of the wives of Henry VIII. Baynard’s Castle was destroyed in 1666 during the Great Fire of London and not rebuilt.

Little is known about the origins of Montfichet’s Tower, which was located at Ludgate Hill, slightly to the north of Baynard’s Castle, at a strategic point on the road that linked London with Westminster. It was between what are now the streets of Ludgate Hill and Carter Lane. In the 16^th century the Tudor-era historian John Stow said of it:

[It] was called Mountfichett’s Castle, of a nobleman, Baron of Mountfichett, the first builder thereof, who came in with William the Conqueror… The castle he built in a place not far distant from Baynard’s, towards the west.

The baron mentioned by Stow was Robert Gernon de Montfichet, from Montfiquet in Normandy. He was granted the village of Stansted in Essex that became known as Stansted Mountfitchet, where the family built another castle.

By the latter decades of the 13^th century Montfichet’s Tower at Ludgate Hill was in ruins. By then both Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower were in the possession of Robert FitzWalter who, in 1275, sold both sites to the Archbishop of Canterbury to make way for the Blackfriars priory.

Immediately after London’s submission to William, a contingent of men were sent to erect a temporary fortress beside the Thames inside the south-eastern angle of the city wall. A ‘motte’ – an artificial mound – was created on which a wooden structure was built. Around its east and south sides were the city wall. On the north and west sides, a defensive ditch was dug to create a rectangular enclosure, or ‘bailey’. The spoil from the ditch was used to form a ‘rampart’, a defensive wall. The entire area was around 1¼ acres.

This fortress was strengthened and increased in size over the following centuries, becoming known as the Tower of London. A Saxon church stood a short distance to the west of the fortress, which remains as All Hallows by the Tower.

In around 1075 work began on strengthening the fortress in the south-east of the city, with a large ‘keep’ – known as the ‘Great Tower’ – that has remained ever since at the heart of the Tower of London. It is similar in design to castles that had been built in northern France since the early 11^th century, but directly on that of Ivry-la-Bataille in Normandy. London’s Great Tower in turn influenced those at Dover, Rochester, Caen, and elsewhere.

The construction was supervised by Gundulf. He had been born in Caen in Normandy in 1024 and entered the clergy where he became a protégé of Lanfranc, the prior of Bec Abbey. Gundulf had a talent for building in stone, so when Lanfranc was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by William, he brought Gundulf with him to England. It seems that William made a bargain whereby Gundulf would be appointed as Bishop of Rochester and have the money to restore the cathedral there if he built the great tower of the London fortress. In 1077 Gundulf was consecrated as Bishop of Rochester. Gundulf later recorded that he was responsible for magna turris Londoniae [the great tower of London] by order of William. He later built Rochester Castle.

The Great Tower eventually took twenty years to build, although work was suspended for around a decade during that time. It was completed in 1100. It was principally built of Kentish ragstone, with some Caen stone from Normandy and Quarr stone from the Isle of Wight.

There were originally two storeys above ground: an entrance floor and upper floor. A chapel was in the south-east corner of the upper floor, with its ceiling rising to two levels, and projecting out eastwards in that corner of the tower. The exterior walls rose a further level to reach the full defensive height of three storeys above ground.

There was also a lower ground floor that was probably used for storage, including food and drink. It also contained a well, which was important if it was ever necessary to resist a siege. The tower was built on a terrace sloping down towards the river, so the northern part of the lower ground floor lay below ground level.

There are towers in the north-east, north-west and south-west corners up which the upper floors could be accessed by spiral stairs, with the lower ground floor from only the stairs in the north-east tower. The two western corners of the tower are square turrets, while the north-east turret is rounded. The south-east corner is occupied by the semi-circular shape of the projecting chapel.

In the 11^th century the tower would have been virtually impregnable. Its massively thick walls ranged from 4.6 metres at the base to 3.4 metres at the top. The entrance was above ground, entered by an exterior wooden staircase that could quickly be removed, making it harder for an enemy to enter. At 27 metres tall, 33 metres wide east to west, and 36 metres wide north to south, it was one of the largest keeps in Europe and dominated the London skyline over the tops of the other small buildings.

The main role of the tower was defensive but there was probably opulent accommodation on the upper floor for the royal family and senior officers. There was a large hall, probably for ceremonial occasions, and the chapel, which remains today as one of the best-preserved Romanesque churches in Britain. Rooms included fires for heating, with the smoke emitted through small openings in the walls, and latrines that emptied into a moat.

William died in Rouen in Normandy in September 1087 and never lived to see the completion of his Great Tower in London. It was finished under his second surviving son and successor as King of England, William Rufus. Although he completed the great tower and added a wall around it, William Rufus put more emphasis on making Westminster his principal residence, notably the surviving Great Hall. The Great Tower was left as a defensive structure during his reign, instead of for royal accommodation.

William Rufus died in a hunting accident, or was possibly assassinated, in 1100 and the throne of England was inherited by Henry, his younger brother. Henry I built a suite of royal lodgings on the side of the tower.

The first known prisoner in the Tower was Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham. He had previously been an important advisor to William Rufus but in 1100 was imprisoned by Henry on charges of embezzlement. Flambard was also the first escapee from the Tower, aided by friends. He fled to Normandy, where he became an advisor to Robert Curthose, brother of William Rufus and Henry.

Henry’s two sons, William and Richard, perished in 1120 when their ship was bringing them from Normandy to England, along with Othuer FitzEarl, the Keeper of the Tower. Upon Henry’s death, the country was plunged into civil war for almost two decades between the two claimants to the throne, Henry’s daughter and heir Matilda, and her cousin Stephen.

The Keeper of the Tower for thirteen years was the unscrupulous Geoffrey de Mandeville and he strengthened the Tower’s defences on behalf of Stephen. King Stephen stayed in the royal lodgings there for the Whitsuntide festival of 1140, becoming the first monarch to reside in the Tower.

Stephen gave de Mandeville guardianship of Princess Constance, daughter of King Louis of France. Instead, he kept her captive in the Tower while waiting to know which side would triumph in the civil war. Stephen was defeated in battle in 1141 and imprisoned, and de Mandeville changed sides. Matilda’s victory was short-lived. Stephen was released and his followers unsuccessfully laid siege to the Tower, repelled by de Mandeville’s men. In 1143 Stephen had de Mandeville arrested and he died the following year.

Stephen died in 1154 and was succeeded by Henry II, son of Matilda and Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. Thomas Becket became the Keeper of the Tower and in 1155 he oversaw a series of repairs that were ordered by Henry. During Henry’s reign, in the years 1171 and 1172, repairs were made to the “King’s apartments in the bailey”, implying that the royal accommodation had by then spread beyond the central tower. A large, square entrance tower was added in the south-east corner of the main tower, small traces of which can still be found. During the 12^th century a royal wardrobe building was added, built into a Roman bastion, which still gives its name to the Wardrobe Tower.

The next monarch was Richard I (the ‘Lionheart’). He spent very little time in England during his reign, and the effective ruler was William Longchamp. It was under his direction that the Tower of London began to be expanded beyond the original tower.

In 1240 Henry III ordered that the Great Tower be whitewashed and in the 14^th century it began to be referred to as La Blanche Tour, (the White Tower).