Our last day together was spent in London visiting the Tower and Westminster Abbey. The Tower is a world Heritage site right in the middle on London and steeped in England’s history. It has been a royal palace, an armoury, a prison, army barracks, a zoo, a jewel house and a place of execution for nearly a thousand years.
Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey, all three Queens of England, were executed here in private on Tower Green without the spectacle of the crowd on Tower Hill. When you listen to an actress on the audio guide quote Anne Boleyn’s last words, it really gives you a peculiar feeling of touching history.
Our Beefeater guided tour was momentarily interrupted when he bellowed, like the Sergeant Major that he is, for a group of students to BE QUIET! And they were too!
The three Queens are buried in St Peter-ad-Vincular chapel next to Tower Green under the Alter and there is only a small floor plaque to say that each one is there.
There was a new exhibition at the Crown Jewels opened that morning by Princess Anne. The rest of the tower has lots to see for the Tudor minded. The White Tower holds not one but two suits of armour of Henry VIII, one on a white horse. Around the other parts of the tower there is evidence of how long some prisoners were held as there is a great deal of graffiti and wall carvings by those unfortunates.
Elizabeth I and others were brought here to the Tower by boat through the infamous Traitors gate and you can see the steps they had to climb form water level.
Westminster Abbey, England’s parish church holds a special place in the nation’s heart. Most Royal weddings take place here, the last one last year with Prince William and Catherine Middleton. It also holds the last resting place of 10 Sovereigns, Henry V, Edward the Confessor, Henry VII, Elizabeth I and her sister Mary. Also residing in a most magnificent mausoleum is Mary Queen of Scots, it is her I think that has the last laugh on history. Sadly, tucked away in a corner and hardly noticeable, is Anne of Cleves just with some gold lettering to mark her tomb in wall.
Our tour finished with a right royal banquet in a crypt of St Katherine’s dock next to the Tower where we were entertained by jesters, acrobats and knights sword fighting for our honour.
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