Ghosts at the Tower of London
YOUR GHOST WALK AROUND THE TOWER OF LONDON BEGINS AT THE TOWER'S MAIN GATE.
DIRECTONS
Having cleared the security checks, pass beneath the Middle Tower (c.1280), where ghostly footsteps have been heard pacing backwards and forwards across the battlements.
Continue to the Byward Tower (1280). In the 1980s a Yeoman Warder working here in the early hours of one morning looked up and was astonished to see two Beefeaters, dressed in the style of a much earlier period, standing on either side of the fireplace, smoking pipes and deep in conversation. As he stared at them, one of them suddenly turned, stared back and then both vanished. DITRECTIONS
Walk through the Byward Tower, past the bookshop, and turn right up the stairs marked ‘Medieval Palace and South Wall Walk’.These take you into the tower.
In 1240 King Henry III ordered the construction of a watergate to fortify the Tower’s riverside defences. Because it was built on marshland, setting the foundations was a difficult task and the edifice twice collapsed into the river. Noting that on each occasion this had happened on St George’s Day, Henry asked the builders to account for the miraculous coincidence. Not wishing to admit incompetence, they invented a supernatural explanation – that, on both occasions, the ghost of Thomas a Becket had appeared and demolished the almost completed tower with his crosier.
Desperate to placate the spectral cleric, whose murder had been the result of the rash words of King Henry II, his own grandfather, Henry III ordered that a chapel dedicated to St Thomas must also be built. The structure was then completed without further ghostly interference, and has survived for nearly seven hundred years supported by little more than marshland and superstition.
The building has recently been opened to the public. It previously provided accommodation for the families of Tower officials, several of whom were troubled by the appearance of a ghostly monk whose sandals would be heard slapping on the stone floors. He occasionally shared his lonely vigil with the ghost of an unseen child whose heart-rending sobs were distressing for those who lived here.
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