Ever since it was erected, the Tower of London has always been a powerful and threatening symbol. This is where crowns were kept and where opponents (and queens) lost their heads. Among the tower’s most famous victims are Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII, and Lady Jane Grey, who was queen for nine days before she was beheaded.
Their stories are covered in the history books and their fame goes beyond Britain. But this new excavation isn’t about the famous few; it’s about the forgotten many. Archaeologists have found skeletons of between 25 and 50 people, none of whom show signs of violent deaths. They do, however, show us what life was like in the London of past.
The Parish, the Powerful, and the Poor
The vast majority of what we know about the Tower of London comes from famous legends and stories. Alfred Hawkins, Curator of Historic Buildings at Historic Royal Palaces, says that view is incomplete. The recent discoveries confirm that the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula was far more than a private resting place for executed nobles.
The excavation began in 2018 as officials were building a new visitor elevator at the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, also called St. Peter in Chains. Situated within the Tower’s Inner Ward, the parish was likely established in the 12th century, and the current building dates from the 16th century. This was the church of the people who lived inside the tower, people about whom we know very little.
As soon as digging started, the scientists found skeletons. The first were a middle-aged woman and a young boy buried sometime between 1480 and 1550. The research team analyzed the isotopes in their bodies and teeth for clues regarding where they came from and what they ate.
A Story of Bones
The woman likely came from Wales and had the diet of a rich person. Her diet was rich in protein (which was a luxury at the time) and sugar, which was only reserved for the very wealthy in the late 15th century. She was clearly a person of status, though not London-born.
The boy, likely aged around 13, tells a very different tale. He was born in London and had the diet of a commoner. He shows signs of malnutrition and distress. Perhaps they were a high-ranking official’s wife and a servant’s son, but we may never know their names.
Then, the more archaeologists dug, the more skeletons they found.
The next discovery was a 14th-century mass grave. The bodies are jumbled and seem to have been dumped rather than placed in the hole. The likely culprit is the bubonic plague that swept through Europe starting in 1348, killing nearly half of London’s population. This was one of the city’s worst calamities, showing that even isolation in the tower couldn’t save people.
But it’s not just skeletons that archaeologists uncover.
A Microcosm of the City
The current chapel, built by Henry VIII around 1520, is just the latest iteration of the building. The archaeologists found charred earth and ash, evidence of a massive fire. This aligns perfectly with historical accounts of the previous chapel burning down in 1512. Beneath that, they found the sturdy stone foundations of the chapel that preceded it, one built by King Edward I in the 1280s.
But the mystery goes deeper. Below Edward’s chapel, they found a compacted layer of Reigate stone, a distinctive creamy-white rock used in another wave of royal construction, this one directed by Henry III in 1240. Was this part of an even earlier church, or perhaps an associated building? It’s not clear. Most exciting of all is the unearthing of a large section of wall and a possible floor surface that seems to predate everything else. Experts speculate this could be a fragment of the legendary “phantom chapel” of Henry I, a 12th-century building known only from scant medieval texts. If confirmed, it would be a stunning discovery, physically connecting the site to the Tower’s Norman origins.
Yet, as the dig is physically descending through the Tower’s architectural family tree, perhaps the most intriguing find is how this patch of sacred ground has been used for worship for nearly a millennium.
The Tower of London was a place of deep faith, where people from all walks of life sought solace and a final resting place. The discovery of burials in coffins from as early as the 13th century, a rarity for the period, suggests high-status individuals were being interred here long before the Tudors. One such grave contained two small charcoal pots, exceptionally rare medieval grave goods used like incense burners to purify the burial space. This speaks to the profound spiritual rituals that unfolded here.
But this wasn’t just a place of worship.
History Under the Tower
The artifacts found alongside the bodies paint a vibrant picture of daily life. Sifting through more than 1,700 cubic feet of soil, researchers have found personal items that collapse the centuries between us and them: a simple ring, a pendant, sewing needles used to mend a guard’s tunic, fragments of stained glass that once cast colored light on praying faces, and even four cannonballs, a stark reminder of the Tower’s primary military function.
The Tower isn’t just a mere collection of crown jewels and execution sites. It is a cemetery for a lost population, a neighborhood filled with people whose lives were as complex and compelling as any monarch’s.
Paradoxically, it’s the installation of an elevator, a modern concession to accessibility, that has given us this unprecedented access to the past. As the analysis continues over the coming years, more secrets will undoubtedly emerge from the soil.
