THE TOWER OF LONDON

Waipa Post, Volume 31, Issue 1775, 26 June 1926, Page 6

THE TOWER OF LONDON

A PLACE WITHOUT GHOSTS. Colonel Dan Burges, V. C., the Resident governor of the Tower of London, presided in the Great Hall of Westminster School recently at the fourth of the “illustrated talks” arranged in aid of King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London.

Mr Walter Bell, F.SA., was the lecturer, and his subject, “ The Tower of London.” He said the stone keep, built by William the Conqueror 12 years after his rule was established in England, was the only part of the Tower that could with confidence be said to have been completed in his lifetime. A. ditch and spiked wooden stockade were probably the only outer works. We knew from the “Saxon Chronicle" that Rufus had begun raising the wall enclosing the inner ward while he was also building Westminster Hall. “Many shires around London were cruelly burdened for the purpose,” l it stated. The single entrance to the inner ward was strongly guarded by the Bloody Tower, above the arched gateway, and flanking Wakefield Tower, because at that stage the wall there rormed the river front. It was King Henry 111 who formed Tower Wharf out on the Thames foreshore, and began the outer fortifications which now were so conspicuous. These necessitated Txaitors’ Gate, to give water access to the fortress, but the >main entrance was at the south-western angle, where two of .the three towers built to guard it remain. Where originally had been a drawbridge over the wide moat was now an arched and paved causeway. There were few sovereigns down to Queen Victoria who had. not added something to the Tower.

Various ghost stories were told of the Tower, declared Mr Bell, but he had sought .diligently and lacked conviction concerning a single one. He had questioned the late Mrs Pipon, th e wife of a former governor, and a much-loved personality at the Tower, and she replied simply: “We don’t .trouble about ghosts here, and they don’t trouble us.” Most circumstantial was the story of the sentry of the old 60th Rifles. When on sentry-go before the King’s House, below the window of Anne Boleyn’s prison room, he saw the white figure of a woman emerge and move towards him. Very ungallantly he lunged at the shade with his bayonet. It met with no re 1 - sistance. The man fell in a swoon and was found lying unconscious on the stones when visiting rounds came along. Afterwards the sentry was accused before a court martial of being drunk while on duty. He told his narrative, and it was corroborated by other soldiers, and then quartered in the Bloody Tower. They said that, ■looking out, they also saw Anne Boleyn’s phantom and saw the sentry strike with his bayonet and swoon. Mr Bell confessed that he had no more belief in the corroborative evidence than in the sentry’s original vision; but the court martial acquitted the man. That was 60 years ago.