The Tower of London: the Menagerie

  This granddaddy of all keeps is instantly recognisable and the history of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London is comparatively well known and much repeated. As it is the first of the castles built by William after the Norman conquest and founded towards the end of 1066 (with the White Tower, which gives the site its name, being constructed in 1078) I could hardly ignore it in a blog largely about castles and Roman remains. I was wary of visiting, fearing the crowds, although I had joined them for the stunning and moving poppy creation in the moat to commemorate WWI - and dead and wounded soldiers of all times.
  However, I went early, as soon as it opened one July morning, and had the place virtually to myself for a while. I was suitably impressed.
The Menagerie
   I did all the enjoyable touristy things, goggling at Henry VIII's armour (just TOO much for first thing of the day!) and wondering why I do not particularly like gold and jewels (that's perhaps the reason I have never married a royal). Then I recalled afterwards that, near where one enters was perhaps the place where a variety of exotic animals was once kept. I thought a few stories about that would be less dog-eared (pun intended.) Nothing now remains of the Lion Tower, constructed by the Leopard Prince, when Edward I, but no CAKE prizes for guessing why it was so called, although we do not know exactly where the animals were housed. A small area here was excavated in 1999 but only domestic animal bones were found, some with (shiver) "gnaw damage". The wild creatures must have been buried elsewhere.

 Two famous animals
   We could guess that one of the earliest inhabitants, a pale or white bear, (probably a polar bear) was kept quite near the river because this gift from King Hakon IV of Norway to King Henry III in 1252 foraged for its own food. The cost of 4 sous a day (i.e. twopence) for feeding the animal for its first year had been felt by the Sheriffs of the City of London to be too great and so the people of the city were told by the king (safely in Windsor) to buy "one muzzle and one iron chain to hold that bear without [outside] the water, one long strong cord, to hold the same bear fishing or washing himself in the Thames." His keeper was also given a thick wrap to wear when he accompanied the fortunate creature to feast on the "far and sweet salmons" later recorded by Holinshed.
    Another later cost was for wine for the elephant which arrived in 1623 for King James as a gift from the Spanish king. Its keepers claimed that, between September and April, the animal would drink nothing but wine, a gallon a day, to protect it from the cold in a foreign land. When it keeled over and died there was speculation that it had not been given enough - but its maintenance would have cost over £275 a year apart from that amount of its regular and abundant tipple.

Stray facts
   During the more than 600 years of its existence, the Tower housed a huge variety of animals in a haphazard and unsystematic fashion, nothing like a modern scientific zoo. The list cannot be complete but there were also: leopards, tigers, panthers, hyenas, wolves, racoons, jackals, a lynx, camels, brown bears (used in baiting), a grizzly called Old Martin, eagles, a porcupine, owls, a rhino and an antelope. The monkey room is of special interest since, for a brief time, visitors were allowed in to wander about despite the damage they suffered from the inhabitants who could pull off their wigs or bite them. It is good to think that, in this case, humans amused animals. Some individual creatures were regarded with great public affection - as they are occasionally today.
   The popularity of the Menagerie as a tourist attraction waxed and waned but there were periods when it was on most people's bucket list: they could either pay the admission cost or offer the family pet. I will spare my sensitive readers the reason for this and prefer the story of the lion which, encountering a spaniel dog in a baiting session, "cherished it, and contracted such a fondness for it, that he would never suffer it to be taken out again, but fed it at his table till he died, which was not till several years after."
  Geoffrey Chaucer - yes, that one - was Clerk of the King's Works for a couple of years and would have had responsibility for the upkeep of buildings connected with the animals.
  The creatures were threatened and terrified by the approach of the Great Fire: Pepys who watched the flames with tears in his eyes had taken the Crewes children to see the lions in 1662: they were so entertained that he described them as being "as pretty and the best behaved that ever I saw of their age." Or did they wonder what would happen to them if they misbehaved?
   For nearly 75 years from 1698 an April Fool hoax was perpetrated: rumours and sometimes posh tickets were issued for the annual ceremony of Washing the Lions. People paid to be taken out in boats for a good view - and to be splashed by the merry oarsmen. That spaghetti harvest has a long tradition.

Attitudes
    The fascinating book from which I have taken most of this information, The Tower Menagerie by Daniel Hahn, documents changing attitudes towards animals over the centuries, from the untutored belief that ostriches could digest iron, to curiosity coupled with an extreme and nauseating cruelty, to a more knowledgeable and enlightened approach. I sometimes think we have swung too far and view them anthropomorphically or value them for their perceived cuteness but that is so much better than the horrors or neglect inflicted on them in earlier eras.

Do visit the Tower when you are in London: go early and afterwards walk along the bank of the Thames to see if you can glimpse the pale ghost of that salmon-eating polar bear idling in the sun or swimming in the water. Do NOT frighten those ravens! You can, of course, get to the capital by bus - I use National Express from Newport and travel in inexpensive luxury, saving my money for CAKE - as always! For opening times click here. To read about another early castle, founded at Chepstow by William FitzOsbern, close ally of the Conqueror, click here.

Berkeley Castle: beautiful and so rich in history

Berkeley Castle stands on a low hill in sight of the Severn estuary and is an appealing blend of Norman fortress and later Medieval mansion. The Domesday Book records that it was founded by William FitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford, who was a powerful ally of William the Conqueror and who makes regular guest appearances in this blog. Since he died in 1071, the castle must pre-date that. His sub-tenant adopted the name de Berkeley and the first 3 generation were all called Roger (just to confuse later historians).  The last was dispossessed in 1152 for withholding allegiance to the House of Plantagenet during the Anarchy.
  The feudal barony was granted to Robert FitzHardinge, a supporter of the Plantagenets, and he, amazingly, was the founder of the Berkeley family which still holds the castle today. Complex? It gets worse: his father, Maurice, had married Alice de Berkeley and from then on most were called Maurice. He received a royal charter from Henry II giving permission to rebuild a stone castle defending the Bristol/Gloucester road and the Welsh border. All this makes Berkeley Castle the 3rd oldest continuously occupied castle in England after the royal fortresses of the Tower of London and Windsor Castle, and the oldest to be continuously owned and occupied by the same family.

Architecture
   The original was a motte castle and, unusually, the keep was not strengthened in stone on top, but the sides of the mound were cut away to form a cylinder, revetted, and the keep constructed around it. Much of the rest is 14th century, built for Thomas de Berkeley (they had thought up another Christian name by then) and visitors can gaze at the battlements dropping 60 feet down to the lawn (all the surrounding area could be flooded in defence), trip steps to cause the enemy to fall over one another (this belies the idea that the door at the top was just large enough for a horseman), murder holes, portcullis slots and huge barred doors.
  Inside, there are grand rooms: the dining room with its 18th century silver service on display was converted from a billiard room as can be detected from the lights and the Great Hall boasts a fine 14th century ceiling. The picture gallery, drawing rooms, buttery (nothing to do with butter of course) and kitchen are all of interest and it is well worth taking the guided tour to learn all the details about their history. I found particular interest in the tale of the bosomy Mary Cole, portrayed here, who could have altered the course of history.

Famous connections
  The best known is the murder of Edward II in 1327, which took place here, committed by his gaolers, Sir John Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gurney, although Berkeley himself was probably absent, being, as Marlowe says, "so pitiful". The alleged method was considered appropriate for what was perceived as his sexual deviancy and also unlikely to leave incriminating marks on the outside of his body - I will say no more. Recently there has been a revisionist alternative to this gruesome bit of history, in which Edward successfully escaped, was not recaptured, and died much later elsewhere. A less well-known and pathetic incident is related in Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle: this concerns the means of making the king less recognisable by the shaving en route to the castle of Edward's head and beard "in a most beastly manner" with cold puddle water. The King said he must have warm water and so "shed forth a shower of tears. Never was King turned out of a kingdom in such a manner." What is generally accepted is that Edward was kept in insanitary conditions above a stinking pile of dead or diseased animals in the expectation that this would undermine his constitution and lead to his death.
  Other royal visitors were: King John (the barons of the west convened here before Runnymede); Henry III; Margaret, wife of Henry VI; Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth I; George IV when Prince of Wales and William IV when Duke of Clarence. Horace Walpole came and was unimpressed! There is much ancient furniture including Sir Francis Drakes's cabin chest and Elizabeth I's bedspread.
  It is said the A Midsummer Night's Dream was written for a Berkeley wedding.

Other points of interest
   As you walk around you might notice a small breach in the wall, a customary bit of slighting during the Civil War: the family were allowed to remain provided they did not repair this damage and, to this day, all they have done is make the wall safe, since they are still under orders from the original Act of Parliament.

In the nearby church, St. Mary's, bullet holes can be seen in the doors, dating from the Civil War and, in the churchyard, you can look at the tomb of Dickie Pearce, the last court jester, who died falling from the minstrel's gallery in 1728. Gertrude Jekyll had a hand in planting the terraces - the gardens specialise in scented flowers and sell some of them. The story goes that Elizabeth I, apart from playing bowls on the green, hunted and shot so many deer that the rest were moved to a park some miles away where she failed to find them. (So did we and settled for reasonably priced CAKE in the tea rooms in the attractive little town, which also dates from Medieval times.) There is a Butterfly House with interesting specimens and a café yurt (selling delicious velvet CAKE!) The house of Edward Jenner, whose invention of the small pox vaccine eventually completely eradicated this terrible disease, is close by and can be visited: it contains the horns of Blossom, the bovine heroine of his original experiment.
   Gertrude Jekyll described the atmosphere of the castle: "The giant walls and mighty buttresses look as if they have been carved by wind and weather out of some solid rock-mass, rather than wrought by human handiwork". In some evening light "it cheats the eye into something ethereal, without substance, built up for the moment into towering masses of pearly vapour."


My readers have sharp powers of forensic analysis and always note when I go off the route of a Monmouthshire bus but I assure you that Berkeley Castle can be reached by public transport. (I was taken by car though on this occasion - cheat!) Do check opening times, however, as it shuts in the winter and hosts weddings towards the end of each week. Click here to find out. William FitzOsbern has already interested us as the founder of Chepstow Castle, which is not far away, and as a powerful Marcher Lord.