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The Jewel House also contains banqueting and church plate, state swords, processional maces and
trumpets, the robes and insignia of the orders of chivalry, and decorations and medals.
An illustrated guidebook to the Crown Jewels is on sale in the Tower shops.
The Community of the Tower
Once the Tower must have contained as many as a thousand inhabitants. Nowadays, some 150 people live
within its walls, chiefly the Yeoman Warders and resident Tower officers and their families.
From some time early in the Tower’s history, the custody of the gates and the safekeeping of prisoners
were entrusted to a body of warders headed by a porter appointed directly by the king. From the reign of Henry
VIII these duties were carried out by a body of the king’s yeomen at the Tower, who were accounted members
of the royal guard and were entitled to wear the royal livery, like the yeomen of the Guard who attended the
person of the monarch.
Both the yeoman Warders of the Tower and the yeomen of the Guard are popularly known as ‘Beefeaters’,
but the nickname was first given to the latter as early as the seventeenth century, when indeed any well fed
domestic retainer might be called a ‘beefeater’.
Nowadays, there are about 40 yeoman Warders, who are former warrant officers in the Army, Royal
Marines or Royal Air Force, with an honourable service record of at least 22 years.
The Tower guard is detached for duty at the Tower from the same regiment which provides the guard at
Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace, usually one of the five regiments of Foot Guards. When one detach-
ment replaces another, the ceremonial changing of the guard takes place on Tower Green.
By tradition, there have been ravens at the Tower from its very beginnings, when these scavengers flew in
to feed off the abundant refuse of the castle. Their presence has been protected by the legend that without its
ravens the Tower will fall and the kingdom with it. Nowadays, their wings are clipped to prevent them straying.
Normally replacement birds are brought to the Tower from Scotland, Wales or the west of England. However,
in recent years some have been hatched at the Tower. Ravens are long–lived, averaging 25 years.
There are usually six ravens in residence, cared for by one of the Yeoman Warders, with the title of
Ravenmaster. The ravens’ cage is near the Wakefield Tower, and their cemetery is in the moat between the
Middle Drawbridge and St Thomas’s Tower.
Of all the traditions and ceremonies of the Tower one above all evokes its essential character as a royal
palace and fortress, the nightly Ceremony of the Keys (open to the public by application in advance). The outer
gates of the fortress are locked and the keys taken to the monarch’s representative in the Tower, the Resident
Governor. Then, for a few hours, the Tower reverts to its original condition, a community separate and secure,
until next morning the gates are unlocked and this great national showplace is once more open to the world.
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