Located in one of the oldest parts of the city’s iconic fortress, the medieval palace has undergone a revamp with a restoration of the sumptuous and extravagant decorative scheme that was in place in the 13th century.
The medieval palace is found within the St Thomas’s Tower, the Wakefield Tower and the Lanthorn Tower on the southern side of the Tower and was built on the orders of successive monarchs, King Henry III and his son King Edward I. They were used as a domestic and diplomatic space periodically by the kings and their queens, Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile.
The medieval palace today includes a recreation of Edward I’s vibrant bedchamber in the St Thomas’s Tower (which once directly fronted the River Thames and sits above the water gate later known as Traitor’s Gate) and an exploration of the influence Eleanor of Castile had on the decoration.
The Wakefield Tower, meanwhile, was built by King Henry III as royal lodgings between 1220 and 1240. It originally sat at the river’s edge and could be accessed from the river by private stairs.
Believed to have been used as an audience chamber, it contains a recreation of a throne and canopy based on 13th century examples which are decorated with a Plantagenet lion – the symbol of the royal family. The vaulted ceiling is 19th century.
The third of the towers – the Lanthorn Tower – was built as lodgings for King Henry III’s Queen but is now a 19th century reconstruction after the original tower was gutted by fire.
It contains a display and among the new objects is a stone, on loan from the Jewish Museum London, which came from a Jewish mikveh or ritual bath, dating to about 1200 and discovered in London in 2001 within the home of the medieval Crespin family. It’s part of a new effort to explore the story of London’s medieval Jewish community, the taxation of which helped to pay for the construction of St Thomas’s Tower in the 1270s.
Other new objects on show in the Lanthorn Tower include a 13th century seal matrix from a 13th century Italian knight and a gold and enamel 13th century pyx – a small round container used to hold communion wafers made in the French city of Limoges (both on loan from the British Museum) as well as a child’s toy knight made of lead that dates from c1300, lent by London Museum and a perfectly preserved wicker fish trap which was excavated from the Tower moat, containing bones likely dating from the 15th or 16th century and illustrating the moat’s role as a fishery.
The medieval palace also includes a small private chapel which is where it’s believed King Henry VI died in 1471.
Among other stories now told in the display is that of less well-known Tower residents such as King Edward I’s laundress Matilda de Wautham, and John de Navesby the keeper of the white bear which was held in the menagerie at the Tower.
WHERE: The Medieval Palace, The Tower of London (nearest Tube Station is Tower Hill); WHEN: 9am to 5:30pm daily (last entry 3:30pm); COST: £35.80 adults; £28.50 concession; £17.90 children (free for Historic Royal Palaces members and £1 tickets are available for those in receipt of certain means-tested financial benefits); WEBSITE: www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/
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