The Tower of London |
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Author:
| Poyser, Arthur |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-37486-6 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2012 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | AUD $6.20 |
Book Description:
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A WALK THROUGH THE TOWER The raised portcullis' arch they pass, The wicket with its bars of brass, The entrance long and low, Flanked at each turn by loopholes strait Where bowmen might in ambush wait (If force or fraud should burst the gate), To gall an entering foe. Soott. The Gascoyne plan...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A WALK THROUGH THE TOWER The raised portcullis' arch they pass, The wicket with its bars of brass, The entrance long and low, Flanked at each turn by loopholes strait Where bowmen might in ambush wait (If force or fraud should burst the gate), To gall an entering foe. Soott. The Gascoyne plan of 1597, reproduced at the end of this book, will show a straggling line of buildings running partly up the slope of Tower Hill and terminating in what was known as the Bulwark Gate. It was there that prisoners, with the exception, of course, of those who came by water to Traitor's Gate, were, in Tudor times, delivered to the custodians of the Tower; and it was there, also, that all who were to be executed on Tower Hill were given by the Tower authorities into the charge of the City officials. Grass grew on thehill and its river slope in those days, and, leaving the Tower Gateway behind, one would, as it were, step into an open meadow, the declivity towards the Moat on one side and the cottages of Petty Wales on the other. The aspect of this main entrance to the Tower has been so altered that it is a little difficult nowadays to reconstruct it in imagination. The Moat made a semicircular bend where the present wooden stockade stands, and it had to be crossed at least twice?some accounts say three times?before the Byward Tower could be reached. The first drawbridge was protected by the Lion Gate; the Lion Tower stood near by to command that gate, and was surrounded by the waters of the Moat. All trace of these outer barbicans and waterways has disappeared; the Towers have been pulled down, the ditch filled up, to make the modern approach to the Wharf. On the right, within the present wooden gateway, the unattractive erection known as the ticket-office o...