On the night of Saturday, the 30th of October 1841, the great Armoury, or storehouse, to the east of St Peter’s Chapel, was completely gutted. The fire broke out in the Bowyer Tower, which abutted on the Armoury; an overheated flue in a stove is supposed to have been the cause. The Armoury had been commenced in the reign of James II. and completed in the reign of William and Mary, to whom, when it was finished, a banquet had been given in the great hall of the building. This hall, which occupied the whole length of the first floor, was afterwards used as a storehouse for small arms, 150,000 stands of which were destroyed by the fire; besides these, were numbers of cannon and trophies taken in the field. The loss caused by the conflagration was estimated at £200,000. The Regalia was saved from the Martin Tower by one of the superintendents of the Metropolitan police, named Pierce, an incident of bravery which Cruikshank perpetuated in one of his finest etchings. Accompanied by the Keeper of the Jewels and his wife, Pierce, with some other officials, broke the bars of the cage behind which the Royal jewels were kept, with crowbars, and then at great personal risk he managed to squeeze himself through the narrow opening thus made, handing out the crown, orb, and sceptre to those outside. The silver font was too large to pass through the opening, and it was necessary to break away another bar of the grating. Repeated cries from the outside now warned the party to leave the Jewel Room, as the fire was rapidly gaining upon the tower, but Pierce remained until he had secured the whole of the Regalia. The heat inside was so intense that some of the cloth upon which the Crown jewels rested was charred. “Some public reward to Mr Pierce,” writes Chamber, in his “Book of Days,” “who had so gallantly imperilled himself to save the Regalia of the United Kingdom, would have been a fitting tribute to his bravery. But no such recompense was ever bestowed.”
Sketch of the Fire at the Tower in 1841.
A contemporary account of the disaster in George Cruikshank’s Omnibus, edited by Laman Blanchard, gives the following description of the destruction of the Armoury:—“There stood the keeper himself, his wife at his side, partaking the peril; and the warders whom he had summoned to the rescue. We must, however, pourtray the stifling heat and smoke; the clamour of the soldiers outside the closed portal, which the fires of the Armoury were striving to reach; nor the roar of the still excluded flames, the clang of the pumps, the hissing of the water-pipes, the gathering feet and voices of the multitude. They are beyond the pencil. The pressure from without increased. Again the clamours rose high, and the furnace heat rose higher. But the keeper abided his time—the crowbars were raised in a dozen hands awaiting his word. It was given! The first blow since the days of King Charles descended on the iron fence; and Queen Victoria’s crown safely deposited in its case, and sheltered therein from smoke and flame, and the common gaze, was removed to the Governor’s house. Orbs, diadems, and sceptres—dishes, flagons, and chalices—the services of court and of church, of altar and of banquet, were sent forth in the care of many a sturdy warder, gallant John Lund being the leader. The huge baptismal font, soon to be called into use for the Prince of Wales, was last removed. The Jewel Room was as bare as if Blood the First had left nought behind him for Blood the Second. How must the spectators have gazed on the bright procession, as from window, and roof, and turret, the Armoury blazed out upon it!... Next in sublimity to the spectacle of the blazing pile, was the scene afterwards presented, when, as the fire lessened, and the smoke cleared off, the whole space of the enormous armoury was opened to the straining eye—a sight of awe and wonder. Above was the sky of a November morn, and below, covering the immense sweep of the floor, heaps of fused metal, of dimensions scarce to be credited, with bayonet points bristling up everywhere, close-set and countless, like long blades of grass.”
The buildings destroyed in the fire were the Armoury, a hideous William III. building, the upper part of the Bowyer or Chevener Tower, which was also hideous and modern. The only relic of much interest destroyed in the Armoury was the wheel of Nelson’s ship Victory; the arms destroyed were modern, and were all soon replaced.
Bragg & Ash 231 Strand
Printed by Kohler Denmark St
The Conflagration as seen from Tower Hill before the destruction of the Roof of the Armoury.
DESTRUCTION of the ARMOURY in the TOWER of LONDON.
by fire on Saturday night October 30th. 1841.
Published by W. Spooner 377, Strand.
The present Gothic barracks were built upon the site of the Armoury, and were opened in some state in 1845 by the great Duke of Wellington, who was then Constable of the Tower. These barracks, which were completed in 1849, were named after the Duke; they are loopholed for musketry, and will hold 1000 men. North-east of the White Tower is a modern castellated building which is used by the officers of the garrison; further to the south-east are the Ordnance Office and Storehouses. The area of the Tower within the walls is twelve acres and a few poles, and the circuit outside the moat is one thousand and fifty yards.