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We will be examining the more mystical and legendary aspects of the Tower, when we feature it in the major sites section, for now here is a brief history, and some of the ghostly happenings associated with the Tower.
Brief History
The first structure on the site was a motte-and-bailey castle, which was started not long after William the Conqueror became king in 1066, the castle was built on the old Roman walls, which once formed the corner of Londinium. The first stone building on the site was the White Tower, which was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1078 and completed in 1097. Gundulf, who was made bishop of Rochester in 1077, oversaw the building of the tower to its completion. It was a bastion of Norman power, towering 90 feet over the capital city. The White Tower has changed surprisingly little from that time, but other buildings and towers have grown around it, so that there are now around 20 towers, and a mix of different buildings dating from different periods of history.
Many of the towers once held prison cells, and the White Tower once held torture chambers within its crypt. Tower Green outside the White Tower was reserved for Royal executions, while Tower Hill served as the public execution place for all the other traitors. Over the centuries the tower has performed diverse royal functions, it has been a prison, palace, observatory, menagerie, place of capital punishment and a museum.
Ghosts and Hauntings
With all the blood, death and intrigue the Tower of London has been involved with in its 900-year history, there is little wonder that it has the reputation as one of the most haunted places in Britain. There have been literally hundreds of executions on Tower Hill, from claimants to the throne, political activists and petty criminals. Many of the towers have also served as prisons, and places of misery for people on the wrong side of powerful people. If anywhere could lay claim to a host of tortured souls it would be the Tower.
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E. L. Swifte, who was a keeper of the Crown Jewels in the 19th century, recorded one of the most interesting and fullest descriptions of a haunting within the tower. He and his family were sitting at a candlelit dinner in his room in the Martin Tower in 1817, when his wife spotted something on the other side of the room. She cried out in alarm and Swifte turned round to see a cylindrical object resembling a glass tube, filled with bubbling blue fluid. The strange apparition started to move and came round behind his wife, who was still sitting at the table. She cried out that it had tried to grab her, and Swifte let fly at it with a chair, which passed straight through the object. The cylinder then receded backwards and disappeared.
Swifte was also a confidant in another ghostly oft quoted sighting; apparently a sentry on guard in what is now the Martin Tower, witnessed the apparition of a bear coming from out of the Jewel Room. He stabbed at it with his bayonet, which passed through the apparition and embedded in a door, whereupon the bear promptly disappeared. The sentry died a few days later, possibly of shock, but he had already confided in Swifte and another sentry who verified his story. The sighting has been dated to January in the year 1815 or 1816.
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