Submitted by Elizabeth McClain on the 2017 winter session program in London, England sponsored by the Department of English and the Department of Theatre..
With our first week in London having come and gone, my friends and I decided that perhaps it was time to delve more into the history of London as opposed to the more notable touristy things to do, so we spent nearly all day Friday—six hours to be exact—at the Tower of London, a structure that served as home to centuries of Kings and Queens of London, jail to hundreds of prisoners, and execution site for the most favored (Anne Boleyn being among these) of traitors.
Our visit to the Tower of London began early in the morning in a chapel, where a tour guide began recounting to us the rich history of the Tower and its many buildings—nearly 13 in all. He was, of course, an Englishman, and he began his speech by asking where individuals in the room were visiting from “Who here is from England?” he’d ask. “Who is from Scotland?” and so on down the list of countries until he came to ours, “and who is from the States?” We sheepishly raised our hands, and when we did, the man exclaimed, “Well this may all sound unfamiliar to you since you haven’t got any history!” The comment offended my friend and I at first, although we knew it was said in jest, but later that night we got to thinking that perhaps the tour guide was right: the United States as an independent nation has only been around for a few hundred years, and while that certainly sounds like a lot, in the history books, our country is still a baby. The Tower of London was first built in 1078, and it was expanded upon in later years dating all the way up to 1399—there isn’t anything in the United States that is that old! In fact, much of our history we take from other countries because America was a country founded by immigrants, but at the Tower of London I was able to walk through a building that was nearly 1,000 years old!
I was able to see the execution site of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, and while I’ll admit that this is probably not the most pleasant detail, it was fascinating to put a place and an image to my British History lessons. Moreover, since the Tower of London is technically a castle, it has one of those marvelous iron gates that a gatekeeper would have needed to raise and lower in order to allow people through, and it opens up to the Thames River, so that was yet another small portion of history that I was able to actually imagine: the medieval era, when one would arrive at the gates of a castle, state their business, and pray to be let through; the United States wasn’t around for this period of time, so we don’t really have any way to witness history in this capacity. The Tower of London will always outlive America, because it has simply been around longer; it has survived every internal and World War (and has the scars to prove it), and it has been remodeled and expanded throughout the course of history several times; each one of its walls tells a story, and simply wandering around, in and out of each tower or across each rampart, was truly fascinating.
And, of course, seeing the Crown Jewels was incredible as well. There is something enthralling about learning the customs and traditions of a governmental structure so unlike our own; the jewels themselves are breathtaking, but the meaning and symbolism behind each and every object is almost more intriguing than how many diamonds there are on the Queen’s crown, and the coronation and procedures are also interesting to watch, as the Tower provides viewers with a video of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Of course, going beyond the history of London—although that in and of itself seems endless! —there is always the history of the world in the British Museum, and I can’t wait to tackle that!