Ghosts of the Tower of London (8 page)

Sally port, Byward archway

The area between the inner and outer walls of the Tower of London is known as the Outer Ward. The southernmost stretch, from the Byward Tower to the Salt Tower, is Water Lane, the river Thames once flowing there before the construction of the outer wall in the thirteenth century. The other three sides of the Outer Ward are called the Casemates. These ‘vaulted rooms within a fortified place’ are stores, workshops and the residences of yeoman warders, their families and other staff. Over the centuries prisoners traversed the Outer Ward on their way to a prison tower or while being escorted to their deaths. It is hardly surprising then that this area has its fair share of occurrences that defy rational explanation.

One night in 1968 a Scots Guards sentry, whose patrol took him from the Byward Tower and Sally Port (a gloomy portal, once the Royal Entrance over the moat) and along to Traitors’ Gate, was found in a distressed condition. ‘They’re following me up and down on my beat,’ he gasped fearfully. ‘They came out of the Sally Port!’ Nothing untoward was discovered–but the sentry had to be relieved of his duty.

Within a year or so yet another visitation occurred, farther along Water Lane. In the middle of the night the sentry on duty there rushed into the guardroom. Distraught, the hair on his neck literally bristling, he could only gasp: ‘Man in cloak – man in cloak!’ He was given medical aid to combat his obviously shocked condition and, when more coherent, he described what he’d seen. A cloaked figure had suddenly emerged from the shadows. The sentry had been about to challenge, but the words had frozen on his lips as he saw that the figure was headless!

King Henry VI

On Water Lane stands the Wakefield Tower, one of the most ancient towers within the fortress. Built in the thirteenth century, it has served many uses: entrance to the long demolished Royal Apartments; storehouse of the state treaties and papers; depository of the Crown Jewels and State Regalia. The most gruesome function however was that of a prison, its dungeon being capable of confining scores of doomed wretches within its cold barbaric walls.

The Wakefield’s most distinguished prisoner was without doubt King Henry VI. This gentle, learned monarch, fated by birth to wear the Crown, was ill-equipped to be the firm, decisive leader demanded by a country torn by civil strife. As the fortunes swung in the War of the Roses, so Henry VI first ruled from Westminster, then suffered captivity in the Tower. There finally, ‘on a Tuesday night 21 May 1471 betwixt xi and xii of the clock, the Duke of Gloster being then at the Tower and many others’, the sad king met his end. Whilst praying in the little oratory in the upper chamber of the Wakefield Tower he was ‘stikked with a dagger, full of deadly holes’ – a dagger, many people believe, wielded by Richard of Gloucester, though no proof exists of this.

And it is said that the king’s pale figure has been seen wandering fitfully outside the chamber in which he was so brutally slain – and that the figure appears between eleven o’clock and midnight!

Between the Wakefield Tower and the next, the Lanthorn Tower, runs a high battlemented wall, part of the inner curtain wall. There, centuries ago, stood the Great Hall, abode of Royalty, providing more comfort than did the White Tower. There kings and queens presided over sumptuous banquets, while maids-in-waiting flirted and jesters pranced and joked.

So who – or what – threw stones at a patrolling sentry on a dark still night in October 1978? From the battlements they rattled about his feet. Thrown singly, they hit his boots, one striking his leg – yet there was no wind to dislodge flaking fragments from the coping stone – nor did they fall vertically, but landed five yards or more from the wall’s base. When another sentry took over, he too was subjected to similar bombardment. A search revealed nothing – except the realization that there was no access to the top of the. sheer wall other than a small door high in the Wakefield Tower, a door not only locked but having a further iron-barred gate secured across it.

No trace of the unseen assailant could be found – but shaken R.A.F. Regiment sentries, and a handful of small stones, bear witness to the playfulness of what long-dead joker?

Facing the Wakefield Tower is Traitors’ Gate, the entrance through which the prisoners were brought by boat from their trial at Westminster. Proud princesses, doomed queens, condemned ministers, lords and prelates passed beneath the grim archway, its portcullis raised in readiness, prisoners en route to harsh imprisonment or worse.

Above the archway is St Thomas’ Tower, named not as is often thought after St Thomas More but St Thomas a’Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, for he it is whose ghost is reputed to have appeared when arch and tower were being built.

In 1240 King Henry III, having filched adjoining land in order to increase the defences of his castle, gave orders for a Watergate to be built, with a low tower above it. Tradition has it that on Saint George’s Day 1240, when the edifice was all but complete, a storm arose and arch and tower collapsed. Work was restarted and proceeded well – until Saint George’s Day 1241, when again the building gave way.

The explanation was given by a priest who claimed that he had witnessed the ghost of St Thomas a’Becket striking the stonework with his cross, whilst exclaiming that the defences were not for the benefit of the kingdom but ‘for the injury and prejudice of the Londoners, my brethren’. Upon which dire condemnation the arch and tower were reduced to rubble.

Henry III, mindful that it was his grandfather who had caused the death of that ‘turbulent priest’ Becket, prudently insured himself against ghostly recriminations by including in the new building a small oratory, and naming the building after the indignant martyr, St Thomas.

Earlier this century the then Keeper of the Jewel House, Maj.-Gen. Sir George Younghusband, KCMG, KCIE, CB, resided in St Thomas’ Tower. He related having been in a room there, the door of which slowly opened – remained so for a few seconds – then just as gently, closed again. This happened more than once, but nothing more was seen. There have been reports of a monk, wearing a brown habit, moving through the shadows, whilst a more recent occupant and his family recounted instances of having heard in 1974 a soft ‘slap slap’, as if of monks’ sandals moving across a wooden floor – disconcerting to say the least, since the residence had wall to wall carpeting!

Wakefield/Lanthorn battlements, Outer Ward

Mint Street, that section of the Outer Ward running north from the Byward Tower, is not exempt from eerie happenings. I myself as a yeoman warder going on duty before dawn one morning heard a sentry approaching along Mint Street. ‘Has anyone passed you?’ the sentry, a Scots Guardsman, asked. I paused, then queried the sentry’s departure from the usual beat. ‘I heard an unearthly shriek,’ he explained. ‘It came from along there.’ He pointed in the direction from which I had come ‘And after the yell I heard the sound of running footsteps!’

He spoke calmly and was obviously not a man given to flights of fancy – yet I had walked alone along the dark, silent street for over two hundred yards, having heard and seen nothing.

Not all the instances have occurred in the open air. Footsteps have been heard ascending the stairs within one of the houses set in the thickness of the outer wall, footsteps sounding when no one but the listening resident was in the house. Later, in an upper room, my wife felt the overwhelming presence of ‘someone else’, a sensation accompanied by a feeling of chilling evil. At last, determined not to panic, she could nevertheless withstand it no longer, and had to retreat hurriedly to find the comfort of neighbours and the everyday bustle of the world.

Traitors’ Gate and St Thomas’s Tower

Other residents have heard the crying of a baby coming from an upper room. Thinking it was their child they investigated. Theirs lay sleeping peacefully in its cot. But the eerie crying continued – from where? from what?

Within the same house a yeoman warder, whilst standing in the hall one evening, suddenly became aware of a man a few feet away, by the front door. No mediaeval figure this; no ruff, no doublet, no foppish Court dress even – yet old fashioned in a way, for he wore a grey suit cut in the utility style of the 1940s. As the yeoman warder turned in surprise, the figure vanished. This happened in 1977.

No records exist of any tragedy in that house – except that only yards away stood until recently the ill-fated rifle range where enemy spies were executed by firing squad during the two World Wars. Behind the high walls of the Tower of London they faced death bravely. Who knows when their spirits found peace?