Meet ‘Keeper’ our dragon created in 2012 in the tradition of 17th-century Tower displays. Composed of 2,672 items representing the Tower institutions celebrated in the wider gallery.
You’ll be surprised at the organisations who have called the Tower home.
Highlights
An invitation “to view the annual ceremony of washing the lions on Monday, April 1st 1856”. This is the original April Fool’s prank, first recorded in 1698.
The Duke of Wellington’s coat when he was Constable of the Tower of London. Wellington held the office from 1825 until his death in 1852 and did much to modernise the Tower’s administration and appearance.
The ‘Block’ used at the last public beheading on Tower Hill in 1747. With accompanying axe – possibly one of four held in store here for executions in the 17th century.
Badge sporting the glorious title “Rat Destroyer to the Honourable Board of Ordnance” – plus a small portrait of it owner Richard Dean.
Flintlock sporting gun made by William Mills in 1721 for Thomas, Earl Coningsby. Coningsby was imprisoned in the Tower 27 February – 29 July 1721 accused of libelling the Lord Chancellor. While here he commissioned the gun from Mills “a barrel forger and frobisher within the Tower”. Look out for the later portrait of Coningsby, his daughters and dogs back home in Herefordshire hanging on the north wall of the gallery.
