Graffiti at the Tower of London – New Research at the Palaces

Historic Royal Palaces Podcast

Historic Royal Palaces

London, Palace, Tower, Historic, Conservation, Royal, Lecture, Learning, Kensington, Hampton, Kew, Banqueting, History, Court, Of, House, Palaces

4.6 • 635 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Tower of London holds an incredible collection of historic graffiti, from the prisoners of the Tudor dynasty, right through to the 20th century. But there is still so much that we don’t know about who made the graffiti and why.

In this episode, we follow Postdoctoral Research Associate Jamie Inghram into the Salt Tower, a legendary prisoner tower in the precinct of the Tower of London. The Salt Tower is rich with graffiti including some examples that have never been investigated before. Jamie talks us through the very early stages of a new research project that is hoping to reveal the secrets of this history.

This episode is part of a series where we’re exploring fresh research that is taking place in our Palaces. We won’t be releasing this sequentially, so these episodes will appear throughout the year.

To see Hugh Drapers Graffiti visit:

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/FAGcYgdjb7Sflg

Please note that POW is an abbreviation for Prisoner of War.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Historic Royal Palaces podcast. I'm Jamie Ingram and I'm a postdoctoral research
0:09.2	associate here at the palaces. Today's episode is part of a series where we're exploring
0:14.1	new research that is taking place in our palaces. We won't be releasing this sequentially
0:20.3	so these episodes will appear throughout
0:23.1	the year. Historic Royal Palaces is an independent research organisation, which means there is
0:28.5	always a lot going on behind the scenes to make sure we're presenting history of our palaces properly.
0:35.1	And that's what this series is all about we want to share any new research
0:39.1	projects or new discoveries with you from the buildings themselves to the objects and the
0:45.0	people that lived in them we hope this series brings to light some new history for you. I'm standing on the wall walk, looking out towards the River Thames at the moment here at the Tower of London.
1:10.0	Behind me, the general public are moving along towards
1:13.5	the Salt Tower, enjoying a gloriously sunny day here. Behind me there's some conservation work going on
1:20.7	on the walls. There's always some conservation work going on somewhere in the Tower of London,
1:25.7	which isn't surprising given the age of the monument.
1:29.3	Today I'm going to talk to you a little about some research that I've been doing and
1:34.3	particularly some of the graffiti that we found in the Salt Tower as part of the pilot project
1:39.3	on the historic graffiti at the Tower of London. So I've just come up past the no entry sign in the Salt Tower, a very narrow spiral staircase
1:55.0	and into the second floor. This area is off limits to the public, so we're definitely behind the scenes now.
2:04.1	When we all think of graffiti, we normally think of the spray paints and the scribblings
2:08.9	that we see on the walls of our cities and towns and on our public transport vehicles.
2:14.9	And whilst we get a little bit of that here at the tower and we do actively dissuade
2:19.0	visitors from doing that, we do have a fantastic collection of historic graffiti, probably one of the
2:26.1	best in the country, possibly even in the world. This ranges from the tiny marks of individuals
	...

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