The White Tower

The basement of the White Tower served as a storage area, for gunpowder and siege supplies. The ground floor was occupied by what may have been used as a reception room, or it may have been the quarters of the Tower Constable. The first floor houses both the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist and two other rooms, one of which may have served as the Great Hall. Important events, formal meals, and public gatherings would have been held in the Hall, while the smaller of the two rooms would have been used for more intimate engagements.

The Chapel, austere in design, is one of few surviving examples of architecture from the 11th century. As it predates the Gothic era, the arches are gently rounded. Lacking the external buttresses of Gothic cathedrals that allow them to seem light and airy, the Norman internal support system of the 11th century White Tower gives the interior of the Chapel a bulky, weighed-down feeling. Not always used as a chapel, for much of its history, it served as a store for records. When Oliver Cromwell set out to destroy all Royal Chapels in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I, this Chapel escaped damage because it was considered a stockpile of accounts, not a chapel. Even though it was used as a store for books, it was not totally devoid of ecclesiastical use: when Elizabeth of York, consort to Henry VII, died in 1503, her body was laid in state in the chapel, and among its more frequent worshippers was Sir Thomas More, executed by Henry VIII in 1540.

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