Hello listeners. Welcome back to this mini-series on the Historic Royal Palaces podcast.

In this four-part series, our curator's team are going to be venturing into some of our most loved spaces in the palaces.

We have chosen these spaces specially in the hope that we can transport you to some of our favourite moments in history.

We want this series to be calm and reflective

and perhaps you'll even find it a little bit moving.

So please get ready to escape to the past with us. We are currently standing in the inner ward of the Tower of London on a slightly miserable morning.

And as per usual, at at the tower everyone is rushing around

getting the fortress ready for the visiting public and so I have to apologize if you

can hear any weird and wonderful noises of people blowing leaves or sweeping things or

moving benches but hopefully you can also capture some of the sense of intimacy

and the natural sounds of the tower without visitors here,

the rustling of the trees, the calls of ravens,

and all of those other wonderful sounds that you can only really get a sense of when you're here alone.

And I'm stood to the south of the White Tower, which is the principal part of the Tower of London and the most important building that we care for.

And today we're going to be talking about a place that I absolutely love, which is the chapel of St John the Evangelist within the White Tower.

I am Alfred Hawkins and for the last six and a bit years I have been assistant curator of historic buildings here at the Tower of London and at the

banqueting house Whitehall.

You may recognise my voice from series two, where I took you around the Chapel Royal

and Royal Peculiar of St Peter Advincula, which is another of the spaces I love within

the fortress.

As part of Historic Royal Palace's building curators team, it's my job to research and to

understand the histories of these buildings and the archaeology of these irreplaceable

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