Tower of London: The Fortress Full of Gunpowder

Why is it significant?

Stand on the riverside wharf with the Thames at your back and the whole fortress rising in front of you: the cannons along the wharf, the dry moat, the grey curtain walls, and above them the pale White Tower with its four turrets, begun by William the Conqueror almost a thousand years ago.

Key Facts

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Stand on the riverside wharf with the Thames at your back and the whole fortress rising in front of you: the cannons along the wharf, the dry moat, the grey curtain walls, and above them the pale White Tower with its four turrets, begun by William the Conqueror almost a thousand years ago. Today it is a postcard. In September 1666, it was the most dangerous building in London. In the small hours of Sunday the 2nd of September, a fire broke out in a bakery in Pudding Lane, a few hundred metres to the west of here. A dry summer, a strong east wind, and streets of timber houses packed with pitch, oil and hay did the rest. That morning the diarist Samuel Pepys, who lived just round the corner, came to the Tower and climbed up to look out over the city. He saw the houses at the end of the bridge burning and people throwing their goods into the river. Now think about what was inside these walls. The Tower was the kingdom's great arsenal, and it held huge stores of gunpowder. If the fire had reached it, the explosion could have flattened this whole corner of London. As the flames crept east, the garrison did the only thing they could think of: they blew up the houses around the Tower to create a firebreak. Watch the lawns inside the walls for big black birds. The ravens of the Tower come with a legend: if they ever leave, the kingdom will fall. The story is usually pinned on Charles the Second, the king during the Fire, but historians suspect it is a much younger, Victorian tale. Still, at least six ravens are kept here at all times, just in case. Over the next four days the fire would destroy around 13,000 houses, 87 parish churches and old St Paul's Cathedral, and then a young astronomer called Christopher Wren would spend nearly half a century rebuilding the city. This walk follows that story from the flames to the dome. Walk up past the moat to Tower Hill, cross Byward Street, and head up Seething Lane to a small dark church in Hart Street.