Half a century and more with the Tower of London

Now, if I could do the sums I might be able to decide if paying 15p for this guide book to the Tower of London in 1971 matches the going asking price of £4.99 today.

But I suspect it’s as silly as “trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”*

My copy is a reissue of the original which was published in 1967 and one I “borrowed” from our Stella and never returned.

During the late 1950s and into the early 1960s I regularly visited the Tower, often on my own and usually on a Saturday morning when admission was free to children and the numbers of visitors was still relatively small.

There was a ritual which started at Queens Road Railway Station and the train up to London Bridge, followed by a brief but intense gaze into the model shop under one the arches and the purchase of a packet of toffee Poppets and then the walk over the old London Bridge and down the Lower Road through Billingsgate market.

By 9.30 the frenetic business of selling was over, but the debris still littered the streets including bits of fish and ice and that all powerful smell.

I thought nothing of it and anyway it was soon left behind for the wonders of the Tower, containing the stories of those incarcerated, the graffiti they left in their cells and the heaps of armour on display.

Never underestimate the power of those thick stone walls to work their power on an imaginative ten your old.

I did occasionally go with friends, but it wasn’t the same as doing it on your own, when you could linger in favourite places, check that the displays were as you had left them the week before and just soak up the past.

Back then I didn’t bother with a guidebook which would have eaten into the week’s pocket money and then as now I preferred to find out for myself.  It’s an arrogance which has often led to me losing out on the significance of a place, a statue or a thing.

My 1971 book is filled with black and white photographs, and a dense text which my ten-year-old me would have found heavy going.

But looking through it again I have to confess it is full of interesting information, but it is a product of its time.

So there are 12 pictures of some of the most notable prisoners, but alas nothing on the more humble who found themselves inside the walls.

Nor is there any reference to what it would have been like to live and work there, which even then was a question I would have loved to ask.

Today the guidebooks and some of exhibits on display at many of our historic places will feature the living and working conditions of those who toiled in the kitchens, guarded the gates or just whiled away the hours between sunrise and sun set.

But perhaps I am being harsh and so with that thought I will close.

Leaving me just to reflect on the cover which I like and reminds me of much else of the art work around in the 1960s.

Of course today most of us will have checked out a museum on line either before or after a visit, but then at 10 in 1959 that wasn't an option.

Location; the Tower of London

Pictures; from The Tower of London Guidebook HMSO, 1971

*“Worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.” Sunscreen, Baz Luhrmann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI