Off With Her Head

Saturday morning started out bright and sunny, and the 4 of us set out to visit my most anticipated site – the Tower Of London. Back when I was in high school and visited London, the tower was closed for renovations and thus we could not visit. In addition, all of the Tubes were heavily advertising a special exhibit in honor of the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the reign of my favorite monarch, Henry VIII.

At Kevin’s wonderful suggestion, we started our visit off with a 1 hour tour from one of the Yeoman Warder (commonly called Beefeaters) as he told a bit about the history of key buildings. I highly recommend the (free) tour to any visitors of the Tower as you can obtain tons of really interesting information without looking like an idiot as you wander around with those stupid headset tours. On a side note, Mumsy was incredibly anxious to figure out why they were called Beefeaters. I did a little research online and while there was no specific reason, one of the most common hypothesis was that they were rationed quite a bit of meat in order to keep them in their top physical form and enable them to properly guard the Crown Jewels and any prisoners being held there. At a time when meat was a luxury, this could have set them apart from other people and given them their nickname.

The first building on the site that is now know as the Tower of London was the White Tower, built by William the Conqueror in 1078. This tower was added to over time until two concentric rings surrounded by a (now filled in) moat existed.

While the architectural history of buildings always fascinates me, the part that most excited me was the fact that a ton of really crucial events in history occured on the very spot. It was here in 1483 that the sons of Edward IV disappeared, murdered by a still unknown person. My favorite monarch had 1/3 of his wives (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard) beheaded, along with the mother of his advisary Reginald Pole. After his death, a relative of his 2nd wife Anne Boleyn laid claim to the throne and was later executed here for her father’s scheming attempts to overthrow the current monarch. The last execution to take place at the tower occured in 1941 during WWII.

Entering the Tower

Tower from Tower Bridge

The Inner Courtyard

The Tower Ravens – they’ve had at least 6 ravens for centuries. Legend has it that if the ravens leave, the White Tower, London, and the entire monarchy will fall.

The Henry VIII exhibit was well worth the crowd – a collection of all his different suits of armor. They even had a nice information card with each suit of armor giving his weight, waist and chest measurements so you could track his rapidly increasing obesity as he got older and his jousting wound festered more and more, preventing him from moving and exercising. As with everything good in London – NO PICTURES. But once again – a few canned images.

The incredible growing King

The tower took over half a day. By the time I was dragged out of there (mentally kicking and screaming) we decided to visit the one thing Kevin really wanted to do – Tower Bridge. Being an engineer, he just had to know how the bridge works. (Ask him for a detailed description. I have no idea how it works other than a counterweight makes it easier for the bridge to swing up.) While I initially groaned, it really was rather neat. You climb the million stairs (okay, not that many, but it was alot) to the top where the exhibit talks about the discarded designs for a bridge to help ease the burden of London Bridge and the design as we see it today. Right away I learned something I hadn’t known before. The straight part of the bridge connecting the two towers at the top was designed to be a walkway for pedestrians so they could still get across when the bridge was up. The exhibit continued across the former pedestrian pathway and down to the inner workings of the bridge. While the bridge is no longer driven by steam, the engine rooms were open and the machinery still in place. I think if my Dad ever came to visit, I would take him there because he would like it as much as Kevin did.

Kevin has to touch EVERYTHING

Still to come – Hyde Park, Ulverston and Windermere (aka the world’s worst luck). I am running very behind on blogging due to the A590 road closure that caused us to not get home until 9 pm tonight.

England's Most Married

When I first arrived in England, I immediately decided that I would fit in a visit to the town of Kendal. Kendal was the birthplace and home of Katherine Parr, England's most married Queen, with 4 marriages. Her third marriage was to the Trifecta's favorite monarch, King Henry VIII, making her Henry's 6th and final wife and earning him the title of England's most married King. In order to remember what happened to all of Henry's wives, all you need to do is remember the poem "Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived." Katherine Parr was by far the luckiest of all of the 6 wives of Henry VIII. She wasn't divorced for reasons that include religious differences and inability to bear a male heir like Catherine of Aragon, she wasn't beheaded for angering the King like Anne Boleyn or sleeping around like Catherine Howard, she didn't die from complications of childbirth like Jane Seymour, and unlike the most unfortunate Queen Anne of Cleves, she wasn't divorced for being ugly.
I arrived in Kendal intending only to visit Kendal Castle and the site of Kendal's first castle, Castle Howe. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quaint streets and river running through town. I hauled my tired, bruised body up the hill to the remains of Kendal Castle and enjoyed the ruins of what was at one time the home of a Queen. King Henry VIII was a frequent visitor to Kendal and as I sat looking out over the field and down onto the town, I could almost picture him riding up to the castle on his horse. Only, in my mind, he looked like the handsome, rougish Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and not like the morbidly obese King with the festering, stinking leg ulcer that history tells us of.
















Who wouldn't rather see JRM instead ?

Anyway, the castle was built in the early 12th century after the previous castle, Castle Howe, became too small. It eventually passed into the Parr family and Katherine Parr was born there in 1512. By 1537, the castle was in disrepair and was abandoned. While it was in no way preserved as well as some of the castles in England, it was still really neat to see up close.

After I was done admiring the castle ruins, I headed down the hill and towards the site of the former Castle Howe, stopping by Kendal Cathedral on the way. Another trek up a huge hill (stupid Brits and there insistence on building castles on hills) and I arrived at the monument to Castle Howe erected in 1788 to commemorate the 1688 Glorious Revolution. (As I am sure the entire Vineyard crew will be happy to hear, this is the actual name of the revolution). For those of you non-history buffs, the Glorious Revolution was the overthrowing of James II by William the Orange.

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