by Geoff Abbott
The Red-Haired Lady on the Queen’s House Stairs
The Queen’s House, a magnificent Tudor building in the south-west corner of Tower Green, rich in timbered panels and ceilings, steeped in tradition, was built in 1530 on the orders of Henry VIII. He intended to live there as an alternative to the White Tower but having disposed of Cardinal Wolsey (who was heading for the block and a beheading, but fortuitously died en route) the King commandeered Hampton Court and so the new house became the official residence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, it being known as the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. In 1880 it was renamed the Queen’s House, in which the Resident Governor and his family live.
It was there in bygone days that prisoners brought to the Tower were initially questioned, ‘booked in’ and assigned their various quarters in the fortress. Some, Guy Fawkes, Anne Askew and others were brought from their prison quarters to be interrogated there, but the really important prisoners were actually confined either there or in the Bell Tower which backs on to it, a tower which can only be entered via the Queen’s House, all thereby being under the day-today supervision of the Lieutenant. Those who endured imprisonment in those two buildings read like a veritable list from history; Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I), Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Sir Thomas More, Archbishop Fisher and many others. Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox was imprisoned there for five years on three different occasions, Lady Arabella Stuart endured over four years confinement only to die, her sanity gone. The doomed Lady Jane Grey was accomodated there for a short while and in more recent centuries the Quaker William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and Rudolph Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of Nazi Germany also found themselves deprived of their freedom behind those timbered walls.
So it is hardly surprising that their suffering and deprivation has given rise to the many instances of supernatural occurrences reported over the last two centuries, accounts of ghostly footsteps (see my Beefeaters of the Tower of London pub. 1985), the unnatural coldness in some of the rooms, the inexplicable sounds heard, even ghostly sightings. And it could have been one of the latter which was experienced by a secretary one dark evening in April 1994. She was alone in the building and, needing some papers from an upper room, started to ascend the main stairway. As she did so, she looked up – to see a woman facing her, a motionless figure who, in her own words, existed only ‘from the waist up, as if in a portrait’. Caught completely unawares, she later recalled the appearance of the figure, noting the white collar and the fact that ‘she’ had red hair. In such a situation it is noteworthy that all sense of time usually deserts the witness, and this level-headed young lady was no exception, describing afterwards how time seemed to stand still, until the apparition suddenly vanished. Unbelieving, she automatically continued to mount the stairs, and quite some time elapsed before she was able to recover from the shock.
Who could the ghostly figure have been? The most likely name to spring to mind is of course Princess Elizabeth who, like most of the Tudors, had red hair, and the ‘white collar’ could have been the ruff, which she made fashionable and therefore mandatory in Court circles. Admittedly she was not executed, but at the time of her imprisonment, under suspicion of being involved in some of treasonable plots prevailing at that time, her mind must have been in an agonised state of constant turmoil lest her half-sister Queen Mary should suddenly decide that such threats to her throne could be eliminated only by condemning her to follow in the footsteps of her mother Anne Boleyn, up the scaffold steps on Tower Green.
The Threshold of the
Tower of London
Lift thine head,
If thou hast yet the gut and will,
Ere Black Cap lifts it for you,
Leaving thy corpse to rest as still
As all the crowd around.
Lift thine head and look aloft for strength,
Before thy blood alone doth smudge the axe’s length.
Immediately outside the Tower of London stands Tower Hill. From that eminence many men – women too – looked their last on the Tower, on London, on life itself. For it was on Tower Hill that scores of victims met death, death that came by the flashing axe, the burning logs, the taut rope. Down through the centuries the names reproach history for the manner in which death was meted out: John Goose, a Lollard, burnt in 1475; four church robbers hanged in 1480, as was Lady Pargitor’s manservant for coin clipping in 1538; John Smith, Groom of King Edward’s Stirrup, beheaded for treason in 1483, together with William Collingbourne, Sheriff of Wiltshire, hanged, drawn and quartered for composing a verse derogatory to Richard III. Death distinguished not between the highest and the lowest; from Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to the Portuguese Ambassador, beheaded for murder 1654, down to Mary Roberts, Charlotte Gardner and a one-armed soldier, William MacDonald, hanged for rioting in 1780. Many eminent names grace the lists, lords, dukes, archbishops, most of them having been led from their prison cells in the Tower of London by the yeoman warders who handed them over (against a receipt!) to the Sheriff of London and his men at the Tower Gates. Following beheading, the head was spiked on London Bridge as an awful example to all, the body being returned to the Tower for burial within or near the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula.
It is hardly surprising then that such suffering should manifest itself to those whose duties require them to be near the main gates. There the victims first faced the waiting crowds, the surging multitude of avid spectators; there the grim procession started, to end on the scaffold on the Hill.
And so it was that one night in World War II a sentry patrolling the Tower entrance was suddenly shocked into bloodchilling awareness of figures trooping down the Hill towards him. Clad in quaint uniforms, they slowly advanced. In their midst they bore a rough stretcher. And on the stretcher sprawled a headless body – whilst between arm and torso lay the severed head! Nearer and nearer the grim cortege approached–to fade into nothingness when barely yards away.
The sentry’s detailed report was investigated by the authorities with great thoroughness. It was discovered that the uniforms worn by the ghostly figures tallied with those issued to the Sheriff’s Men in the Middle Ages, men whose job it was to bring the corpse back for burial; the head being conveyed to London Bridge by river from Tower Steps, the quickest and most customary route. All the reported facts agreed with historical detail – so who are we to doubt it?
The Middle Tower
The Middle Tower
Here the mind’s ear is sore press’t
To catch but one sweet blessèd breath
Drawn from out an happy heart.
This tower they call the Middle….
What hath become of both the end and start,
And which fine joker hath brought forth
This gloomy riddle?
This, the first tower encountered on entering the castle, dates from 1280, though it was restored in 1717. It was too near the outer walls to be much used as a prison, but the name of one eminent prisoner appears in the ancient records, that of Laurence Shirley, Earl Ferrers. In 1760 he murdered his bailiff Johnson, shooting him with a pistol, for which foul deed he was taken to Tyburn to be hanged. Always elegant, the earl wore silver-embroidered clothes and made his final journey in his own carriage drawn by six horses. His entitlement, as an earl, to be hanged by a silken cord, was denied. He swung from a common hempen rope.
So was it his eccentric spirit which, a few years ago (1977), terrified two painters working within the Middle Tower? In broad daylight they heard the echoing sound of footsteps pacing the battlemented roof above. At first each thought the other was responsible and so was not alarmed. And then, when both were later working together in the same room … the measured pacing suddenly commenced. With dawning horror their eyes followed the path of the sounds beyond the ceiling – to pause – then to retrace its route.
Assistance was called for, and a thorough search revealed no physical presence nor any hiding-place. No battlements connect this tower with any other. Yet again
and again during the next few days the footsteps were heard.
Was it the murderous earl – or some other, unrecorded felon, whose restless soul finds no peace?
Water Lane – Bloody Tower and Wakefield Tower on the left
The Outer Ward
What sweet subtletie thou art,
That takes my heart
And renders it ensnared and palpitating!
Thou art surely of the Gods’ creating,
And naught of this unhappy Tower,
The combining of a shining Parenthood art thou,
A very Child of Eos with thy milken brow,
A cradle’s wealth grown unto woman now,
The breath of life for which my soul lay waiting.
O dally by the Well Tower yet,
And cull a knot of Bergamot
Within thy garden,
Till my frail grasp betrays me to this Oubliette,
And I am thus by thee and all the World forgot,
Who none would pardon.
Sally port, Byward archway
The area between the inner and outer walls of the Tower of London is known as the Outer Ward. The southernmost stretch, from the Byward Tower to the Salt Tower, is Water Lane, the river Thames once flowing there before the construction of the outer wall in the thirteenth century. The other three sides of the Outer Ward are called the Casemates. These ‘vaulted rooms within a fortified place’ are stores, workshops and the residences of yeoman warders, their families and other staff. Over the centuries prisoners traversed the Outer Ward on their way to a prison tower or while being escorted to their deaths. It is hardly surprising then that this area has its fair share of occurrences that defy rational explanation.
One night in 1968 a Scots Guards sentry, whose patrol took him from the Byward Tower and Sally Port (a gloomy portal, once the Royal Entrance over the moat) and along to Traitors’ Gate, was found in a distressed condition. ‘They’re following me up and down on my beat,’ he gasped fearfully. ‘They came out of the Sally Port!’ Nothing untoward was discovered–but the sentry had to be relieved of his duty.
Within a year or so yet another visitation occurred, farther along Water Lane. In the middle of the night the sentry on duty there rushed into the guardroom. Distraught, the hair on his neck literally bristling, he could only gasp: ‘Man in cloak – man in cloak!’ He was given medical aid to combat his obviously shocked condition and, when more coherent, he described what he’d seen. A cloaked figure had suddenly emerged from the shadows. The sentry had been about to challenge, but the words had frozen on his lips as he saw that the figure was headless!
King Henry VI
On Water Lane stands the Wakefield Tower, one of the most ancient towers within the fortress. Built in the thirteenth century, it has served many uses: entrance to the long demolished Royal Apartments; storehouse of the state treaties and papers; depository of the Crown Jewels and State Regalia. The most gruesome function however was that of a prison, its dungeon being capable of confining scores of doomed wretches within its cold barbaric walls.
The Wakefield’s most distinguished prisoner was without doubt King Henry VI. This gentle, learned monarch, fated by birth to wear the Crown, was ill-equipped to be the firm, decisive leader demanded by a country torn by civil strife. As the fortunes swung in the War of the Roses, so Henry VI first ruled from Westminster, then suffered captivity in the Tower. There finally, ‘on a Tuesday night 21 May 1471 betwixt xi and xii of the clock, the Duke of Gloster being then at the Tower and many others’, the sad king met his end. Whilst praying in the little oratory in the upper chamber of the Wakefield Tower he was ‘stikked with a dagger, full of deadly holes’ – a dagger, many people believe, wielded by Richard of Gloucester, though no proof exists of this.
And it is said that the king’s pale figure has been seen wandering fitfully outside the chamber in which he was so brutally slain – and that the figure appears between eleven o’clock and midnight!
Between the Wakefield Tower and the next, the Lanthorn Tower, runs a high battlemented wall, part of the inner curtain wall. There, centuries ago, stood the Great Hall, abode of Royalty, providing more comfort than did the White Tower. There kings and queens presided over sumptuous banquets, while maids-in-waiting flirted and jesters pranced and joked.
So who – or what – threw stones at a patrolling sentry on a dark still night in October 1978? From the battlements they rattled about his feet. Thrown singly, they hit his boots, one striking his leg – yet there was no wind to dislodge flaking fragments from the coping stone – nor did they fall vertically, but landed five yards or more from the wall’s base. When another sentry took over, he too was subjected to similar bombardment. A search revealed nothing – except the realization that there was no access to the top of the. sheer wall other than a small door high in the Wakefield Tower, a door not only locked but having a further iron-barred gate secured across it.
No trace of the unseen assailant could be found – but shaken R.A.F. Regiment sentries, and a handful of small stones, bear witness to the playfulness of what long-dead joker?
Facing the Wakefield Tower is Traitors’ Gate, the entrance through which the prisoners were brought by boat from their trial at Westminster. Proud princesses, doomed queens, condemned ministers, lords and prelates passed beneath the grim archway, its portcullis raised in readiness, prisoners en route to harsh imprisonment or worse.
Above the archway is St Thomas’ Tower, named not as is often thought after St Thomas More but St Thomas a’Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, for he it is whose ghost is reputed to have appeared when arch and tower were being built.
In 1240 King Henry III, having filched adjoining land in order to increase the defences of his castle, gave orders for a Watergate to be built, with a low tower above it. Tradition has it that on Saint George’s Day 1240, when the edifice was all but complete, a storm arose and arch and tower collapsed. Work was restarted and proceeded well – until Saint George’s Day 1241, when again the building gave way.
The explanation was given by a priest who claimed that he had witnessed the ghost of St Thomas a’Becket striking the stonework with his cross, whilst exclaiming that the defences were not for the benefit of the kingdom but ‘for the injury and prejudice of the Londoners, my brethren’. Upon which dire condemnation the arch and tower were reduced to rubble.
Henry III, mindful that it was his grandfather who had caused the death of that ‘turbulent priest’ Becket, prudently insured himself against ghostly recriminations by including in the new building a small oratory, and naming the building after the indignant martyr, St Thomas.
Earlier this century the then Keeper of the Jewel House, Maj.-Gen. Sir George Younghusband, KCMG, KCIE, CB, resided in St Thomas’ Tower. He related having been in a room there, the door of which slowly opened – remained so for a few seconds – then just as gently, closed again. This happened more than once, but nothing more was seen. There have been reports of a monk, wearing a brown habit, moving through the shadows, whilst a more recent occupant and his family recounted instances of having heard in 1974 a soft ‘slap slap’, as if of monks’ sandals moving across a wooden floor – disconcerting to say the least, since the residence had wall to wall carpeting!
Wakefield/Lanthorn battlements, Outer Ward
Mint Street, that section of the Outer Ward running north from the Byward Tower, is not exempt from eerie happenings. I myself as a yeoman warder going on duty before dawn one morning heard a sentry approaching along Mint Street. ‘Has anyone passed you?’ the sentry, a Scots Guardsman, asked. I paused, then queried the sentry’s departure from the usual beat. ‘I heard an unearthly shriek,’ he explained. ‘It came from along there.’ He pointed in the direction from which I had come ‘And after the yell I heard the sound of running footsteps!’
He spoke calmly and was obviously not a man given to flights of fancy – yet I had walked alone along the dark, silent street for over two hundred yards, having heard and seen nothin
g.
Not all the instances have occurred in the open air. Footsteps have been heard ascending the stairs within one of the houses set in the thickness of the outer wall, footsteps sounding when no one but the listening resident was in the house. Later, in an upper room, my wife felt the overwhelming presence of ‘someone else’, a sensation accompanied by a feeling of chilling evil. At last, determined not to panic, she could nevertheless withstand it no longer, and had to retreat hurriedly to find the comfort of neighbours and the everyday bustle of the world.
Traitors’ Gate and St Thomas’s Tower
Other residents have heard the crying of a baby coming from an upper room. Thinking it was their child they investigated. Theirs lay sleeping peacefully in its cot. But the eerie crying continued – from where? from what?
Within the same house a yeoman warder, whilst standing in the hall one evening, suddenly became aware of a man a few feet away, by the front door. No mediaeval figure this; no ruff, no doublet, no foppish Court dress even – yet old fashioned in a way, for he wore a grey suit cut in the utility style of the 1940s. As the yeoman warder turned in surprise, the figure vanished. This happened in 1977.
No records exist of any tragedy in that house – except that only yards away stood until recently the ill-fated rifle range where enemy spies were executed by firing squad during the two World Wars. Behind the high walls of the Tower of London they faced death bravely. Who knows when their spirits found peace?
