White Tower Basement
Only one staircase links all the floors, and for security it is set into the far north-eastern Tower. Anyone breaking into the building would have to fight across the whole floor to access it. You might like to count the stairs as you spiral down into the basement from the top floor!
The basement has long been used as a storeroom, and today contains a selection of cannon, mortars and trophies – a mere shadow of the great displays originally housed in the Grand Storehouse. The destruction of the latter is commemorated with a display of fire damaged relics. See if you can identify the gun parts fused together, and look at the transformation of flints used to fire guns, when heated to extremes.
The intensity of the fire was such that it melted gun barrels (look on the first floor at the Tudor triple barrelled bronze cannon by Peter Baude, cracked and broken in the fire), but the 3,380 Kg mortar from the siege of Namur survived, as you can see. Some of the debris was recycled, and the candle-stick is a novel way of using old gun parts.
The south–western end of the Basement has Victorian models of the Tower, and examines the Tower’s influence outside the site in the Liberties where the Tower authorities exercised certain local government functions well into the 19th century. The official measures displayed here ensured that local businesses did not attempt to sell their customers short.
There is lift access to this area from the ground floor exit, and visitors with mobility problems can come to the handling point here and explore armour and a sword for themselves. The Royal Armouries also stage handling sessions of more fragile material here on a regular basis.
On your way out look out for the lead cisterns which originally stored water around the site, and the lion of St Mark captured from the French during the Napoleonic wars – one of the many trophies which found its way onto the site.
Notable objects located in this gallery
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Candlestick
This candlestick was created from old gun parts reclaimed from the Grand Storehouse fire of 1841.
Dates from 1845 | Object number: XVIII.356
