FORTRESS, PALACE AND PRISON.
BY EDITH SESSIONS TUPPER.
It is believed by many that the Tower of London is, as its name would seem to indicate, but a single lofty pile, while in reality it is a vast collection of grim towers and frowning bastions; a great walled town in the heart of busy London.
The Tower, or the White Tower, built in the time of the Conqueror, is surrounded by twelve smaller towers—Bloody, Bell, Beauchamp, Devereux, Flint, Bowyer, Brick, Martin, Constable, Broadarrow, Salt and Record. In turn, these are environed by the ballium walls and bastions, and the moat guarded by Middle, Byward, St. Thomas, Cradle, Well and Devlin towers.
As one descends Tower Hill, the eye takes in the whole immense and hoary mass, fit emblem of the stormy and tempestuous times in which each separate tower arose. Like black shadows of the past casting their gloom over the present, rise the lofty turrets above the roofs of modern buildings. Sternly they look down upon throbbing London, each with its own history, each with its own awful secrets locked in its stony breast.
Amid the terrific conflict of the days when the Norman was trampling the Saxon under foot, the Tower, the Great Tower, or the White Tower, as it was variously called, arose.
William the Conqueror caused it to be built as a fortress for himself in case his Saxon subjects might rebel against his hard and iron rule. Among the ecclesiastics who possessed the richest sees of those days was Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, who was also a fine military architect. To him the Conqueror gave the commission to build his New Fortress in 1079-80. Gundulph selected the site just without the city then, and to the east, on the northern side of the Thames. The tower is quadrangular in shape, one hundred and sixteen feet from north to south, ninety-six from east to west, ninety-two feet in height, and its external walls are fifteen feet in thickness—an imposing and superb specimen of Norman architecture. It is three stories high, not counting the vaults. There are some slight traces remaining of the grand entrance on the north side, but visitors enter by modern doors on both the north and south sides.