JONES: For me a great British castle is a fortress, a palace, a home.

And a symbol of power, majesty, and fear.

For nearly 1,000 years, castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.

These magnificent buildings have been home to some of the greatest heroes and villains in our national history.

And many of them still stand proudly today, bursting with incredible stories of warfare, treachery, intrigue, and even murder.

Join me, Dan Jones, as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.

This time, I'm exploring one of the oldest and most notorious castles ever built.

A fortress, prison, and execution place.

Built to inspire fear in everyone who walked through its gates.

Imagine London, one of the great capital cities, conquered, subjugated, and invaded by aliens.

And imagine if they backed up that invasion, by building something new, terrifying and utterly overwhelming.

A gigantic piece of military hardware, designed to show off the power of the invaders and scare the population half to death.

This brooding monolith was from another world, but it wasn't science fiction.

It was very, very real.

Today, the Tower of London is Britain's most visited tourist site.

But, back in the 11th century, it was the state-of-the-art weapon of a new ruling elite.

-(MEN GRUNTING) -(SWORDS CLASHING) But of course, it wasn't built by little green men.

It was the brainchild of one of the most ruthless kings in English history.

(MEN YELLING) William the Conqueror.

William was the illegitimate son and heir of the Duke of Normandy, which meant he was actually descended from the Vikings.

And like any good Viking, he had a taste for sailing to new lands and taking them for himself.

In 1066, he set his sights on England.

William took an army across the English Channel and defeated his Saxon rival Harold at the Battle of Hastings.

The Norman Invasion, perhaps the greatest turning point in English history had begun.

(MEN GRUNTING) After the battle,William and his army raced to London.

They marched around the city, burning everything they came across.

It was a stunning show of force.

And it worked.

Within weeks, the terrified citizens of London surrendered without a fight.

On Christmas Day, 1066, William, Duke of Normandy was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.

But this was more than just a cheeky power grab by a foreign upstart.

It was the beginning of a conquest that would engulf the whole of England.

And at the heart of the conquest William built a series of massive castles, designed to put the masses in their place and show them that he was their new boss.

The centerpiece of this network was the vast stone structure known as the White Tower.

It loomed over London and its location was carefully chosen.

William used a 1,000 year old blueprint, left behind from the last great civilization that had invaded England, the Romans.

The Normans were building on top of old Roman ruins, right?

PRIOR: Stone castles is the name of the game.

To say, as the Romans said "I came, I saw, I conquered.

We came, we saw, we conquered."

So he's basically setting himself up as the new imperial kind of power in the land.

The classic example of that one is Colchester if you like.

Probably the very first stone castle that's constructed by the Normans in this country it could be that one, very closely followed by the Tower of London.

And then at London he builds this massive stone castle, which is his seat of power within the capital city.

JONES: There's another part of this story of the two castles as well, isn't there?

PRIOR: Supposedly, the architect for both sites is the Bishop of Rochester, a guy called Gundulf, and J.R.R.Tolkien, who obviously everybody knows from Lord of the Rings, supposedly takes, because he's an Anglo-Saxon scholar at Cambridge, takes Gundulf, and Gundulf becomes Gandalf.

And of course The Two Towers is the name of the book, the second book.

JONES: But long before the Tower inspired Tolkein, it had a very clear political role.

By building in stone, William was sending a message.

The Normans were here to stay.

The White Tower was 90 feet high and its walls were 15 feet thick.

It earned its name, because it's white-washed stone walls could be seen for miles around.

Londoners would never have seen anything like it.

Heavily armed foreign soldiers stood behind thick stone walls.

And it all sent out a clear message.

This was a castle devoted to one simple purpose.

Maintaining royal power.

Today, it's hard to know where power really lies in London.

Is it across the river with the Mayor at City Hall?

Is it with the politicians at Westminster?

Is it with the money men in the city?

Well, in the 11th century, there was no doubt where power lay.

This enormous square fortress landed next to London as threatening and as alien as a spaceship.

Placed next to the most important city in England, it took nearly a quarter of a century to build.

But it was worth it.

(FOOTSTEPS THUDDING) William was the new boss.

And the White Tower proved it.

Now, no one in England's capital would dare to disobey their new ruler.

It seems hard to imagine today.But it's not.

If you want to get a sense for how the Tower loomed over London and overawed Londoners, the best way is to check out the 21st century equivalent.

This is The Shard.The tallest building in Britain.

Seventy-two stories high, it really does soar above London, overshadowing everything that stands around it.

Much like the Tower of London once did.

The view from up here is absolutely astounding.

It's a cloudy day and you can see, still, about 14 to 15 miles in every direction.

This must have been exactly how you'd have felt if you were a Norman king or a Plantagenet king down there in the White Tower looking over the medieval city.

And down below all that the Tower of London looks kind of puny, but you've got to unimagine all of modern London and try and think back to what it would have looked like, say, in the 12th century when William FitzStephen wrote his famous description of the city, and he described the Tower of London there bang in the eastern corner as rising up on ancient foundations, its mortar mixed with blood.

Well, that was the eastern end and the walls came out, and stretched round what we now think of as The Square Mile.

And there was St.

Paul's Cathedral rising up in the middle and then down at the end on the other side you had Westminster and that was, as now, a political village.

But what was important was that these two points, the Tower and Westminster marked out a line of power.

So, every king before their coronation in the Middle Ages emerged from the Tower and processed through the city all the way down to Westminster Abbey to be crowned.

And that was the ultimate political pageantry.

In the years that followed William's conquest, London grew rapidly.

By the end of the 13th century the population had reached over 100,000.

But as the city grew, so did the tower and its supremacy.

And it's that tension between the Tower and the citizens that lies at the heart of our story.

In times of pomp and celebration, everything started at the Tower, but in times of chaos and crisis, it was a place to go and retreat.

So this wasn't just a castle designed to overawe the common people.

It was also somewhere to hide from them.

In the 11th century, the White Tower was built by William the Conqueror as a symbol of Norman power.

Under the kings who followed him it grew bigger, stronger, and more menacing.

In the 13th century, Henry III extended the castle to the north and east with a curtain wall.

And he transformed the interior into a comfortable royal palace, which is how it's been restored today.

But much of the modern castle was the work of Henry's son.

A king who added a truly deadly reputation to the Tower of London.

Henry III's son Edward I was a warrior king and one of English history's keenest castle builders.

He spent twice as much on the Tower of London as his father despite only rarely using it as a royal residence.

But Edward had a difficult relationship with London and with the Londoners.

And he liked to be sure that when he needed to, he could keep his distance from them.

Edward built a second concentric curtain wall to enclose the first and he extended the moat, so the Tower we see today is essentially the one he completed.

And it was sending a very clear message to the city.

Know your place.

And know, that I am your King.

In the Middle Ages, castles weren't just places to house soldiers.

They were also heavily involved in royal finance.

Both as places to keep the King's money, and to imprison those who tampered with it.

Any kingdom ancient or modern depends on a system of commerce.

Buying and selling, borrowing and lending and taxation.

But its money that lies at the dark heart of two of the most vicious and violent stories in the history of the Tower of London.

Edward I spent his entire reign fighting expensive foreign wars.

It cost him a fortune and it made him obsessed with the currency of the realm.

Edward was prepared to deal very harshly with anyone who meddled with his money.

(INDISTINCT TALKING) Medieval coins were made of silver.

A soft metal that was very easy to bend, break and forge.

One of the most common methods of medieval fraud was coin clipping.

Cutting away the edges of silver pennies, melting down the slivers, and making new, fake coins of your own.

Since all money technically belonged to the King, by clipping coins, you were actually stealing from the royal pocket.

If you look at the definition of a coin, it's a piece of precious metal, whose intrinsic value is equal to its face value, and stamped with an official mark guaranteeing its weight and fineness.

So, it does exactly what it says on the coin.

If you have a penny like that, it contains a penny worth of silver.

JONES: And they all have to be the same, because that's what money is.

Yes, it's the weight of the coin.

The coins were weighed.

Not normally counted.

JONES: So, coinage was something that was taken really, really seriously -in the Middle Ages.

-It had sterling qualities.

English coin was renowned throughout the entire world.

-Because it was so pure and so regular?

-It was good quality and should have been good weight and good standard of silver.

Which explains then why anyone who was caught doing, -you know, debasing the coin... -It was treason.

It was treason.

JONES: Clipped coins flooded the economy and caused inflation.

They made foreign merchants suspicious of doing business with the English and they reduced the real amount of tax that could be collected from the people.

In 1278, Edward decided to get a grip on his realm's money.

And the Tower was at the heart of it.

Since Edward wasn't using the Tower much as a royal palace, he decided to move the mint within the walls.

It was here on Mint Street which stretches for three sides of the Tower Of London.

It was an enormous operation.

Edward's new mint improved the look of his coins.

But as well as fixing the coin itself, Edward wanted a scapegoat to punish for the widespread crimes of clipping.

He found one in England's most vulnerable community.

A minority that was involved in finance and money lending.

The Jews.

Edward blamed everyone for coin clipping but he blamed the Jews more than anyone else.

Throughout the 1270s he'd already been levying punitive taxes on them, restricting their ability to trade and do business.

Then in November 1278, he suddenly rounded up England's whole Jewish population putting 700 Jews here in the Tower.

(INDISTINCT TALKING) SOLDIER: Come on.

SOLDIER: Get in there.

JONES: Of all the hundreds of Jews that Edward had imprisoned here in the Tower, almost half were hanged.

In fact, for every Christian executed for coin clipping, 10 Jews suffered the same fate.

And within a decade, Edward had passed an act of expulsion, banishing the Jews from England for nearly 500 years.

This was the worst Jewish massacre in British history.

But Edward's actions were met with little more than a shrug from the rabidly anti-Semitic society of medieval England.

And what was more, he had bolstered the fearful name of the Tower of London.

By the end of Edward's reign no-one would dare to question the authority of the Tower.

But 100 years later, the Tower's mighty reputation was blown to pieces, as the castle found itself at the center of the greatest popular uprising in British history.

The Peasants' Revolt.

In the second half of the 14th century England was going to the dogs.

The new King,Richard II was a 14-year-old boy, and the country was being governed by his councils, led by the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop Simon Sudbury.

But, Sudbury's rule was a disaster.

And throughout the country, people were starting to mutter about rising up in protest.

(PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY) In 1381, people were moaning about the same sort of things they still moan about today, war, death, and money.

A war had been going on with France for generations.

The Black Death had wiped out nearly half the population of England.

Then, on top of all that, came a tax, a poll tax levied on everyone old and young, rich and poor.

And there were three of them levied on England, one after the other in four years.

(PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY) The poll taxes were the final insult to a country that was well and truly fed up.

On the 13th of June, a large group of militant protesters led by the Kentish rebel, Wat Tyler, entered London.

They burned jails and legal offices.

They chopped the heads off anyone associated with the government, piling their corpses in the streets.

(CROWING) The following morning, Tyler and the rebels turned their attention to the ultimate symbol of political power.

The Tower of London was the rebels' central focus, but why?

They didn't want the lavish apartments, the royal jewels or even the coin in the mint.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER) They didn't want to capture the King,the teenage Richard II, which is just as well because on the day they stormed the Tower, he wasn't even here.

(PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY) What they really wanted were the traitors who had imposed the poll tax.

This is like today's Londoners marching along Downing Street and trying to kidnap the Prime Minister.

Archbishop Sudbury knew that the rebels were baying for his blood.

Terrified, he and his ministers fled to the White Tower where they hid in the chapel and prayed for salvation.

(PRIEST PRAYING) Archbishop Sudbury and several other royal ministers had taken refuge in the Tower, because it was supposed to be the safest place in London.

But when the angry mob burst through the doors suddenly, it was the most dangerous.

Sudbury was hiding in this chapel when the rebels found him.

He'd been saying masses all morning and now he was saying his final prayers.

Most traitors were brought to the Tower, but now Sudbury was about to be taken out of it.

He was dragged out to Tower Hill and decapitated.

His head was stuck on a spike with his bishop's miter nailed on for good measure.

For a gang of ordinary peasants to take, what was basically the Prime Minister of the day, out of a chapel in the greatest fortress in the land and hack his head off on Tower Hill is completely extraordinary and this is almost like communism 600 years before its time.

The following day, the young King Richard met the rebels to hear their complaints.

But the meeting turned violent.

And when Tyler made a move toward the King, he was grabbed by one of Richard's men, and run through.

A revolution was avoided, but only just.

The Peasants' revolt was one of the most shocking episodes in English history.

It ended with London on fire, the Chancellor's head on a stick and the mighty Tower of London stormed by a gang of villagers.

The lesson perhaps?

Well, you antagonize the mob at your peril, but it was also a reminder Well, you antagonize the mob at your peril, but it was also a reminder that the Tower, like any other castle, was only as strong as the person holding it.

The Tower of London survived, and regained its reputation as a menacing fortress.

But soon, it would be the scene of one of Britain's most notorious and mysterious crimes.

The Tower of London, first built by William the Conqueror began its long life as a military weapon aimed at the city of London.

Over the centuries its power and prestige grew.

Kings stayed in the Tower the night before their coronations, and they retreated behind its walls to ride out periods of rebellion and war.

But occasionally, kings would go into the Tower and never come out.

One of the great mysteries of the Tower is the story of the two princes.

It's fascinated people for centuries and it's easy to see why.

This is a riddle worthy of any detective novel.

A crime that changed history and has never been properly solved.

(CHILDREN LAUGHING) The princes in the Tower were 12-year-old King Edward V and his brother the 10-year-old Richard,Duke of York.

In 1483, their father Edward IV, died suddenly at the age of 40.

The boys' uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, quickly took them into his custody, and placed them in the Tower of London.

He claimed to be their protector and promised to rule the kingdom on their behalf.

But soon Richard's plans changed.

He declared the two princes illegitimate, and took the crown for himself, as Richard III.

The boys were no longer in the Tower for their own safety.

They were prisoners.

For a few weeks, passers-by saw young Edward and his brother playing games in the Tower gardens.

But after a while, their servants were dismissed, and they gradually disappeared from public view.

By the time Richard had been king for a couple of months, his nephews had vanished completely.

They were never to be seen again.

For centuries, the fate of the boys was a mystery.

Most writers in the Tudor years blamed Richard III, including William Shakespeare, who portrayed him as an evil, hunchbacked, crown- stealing murderer.

But was he really a murderer?

Without any bodies, it was difficult for anyone to be sure.

Then, suddenly, startling new evidence was turned up, hidden deep within the fabric of the Tower of London.

During the reign of Charles II,workmen were remodeling the tower when they found the skeletal remains of two children, hidden under this staircase.

When Charles II heard that the bones had been found, he wanted them reburied with royal dignity, which is why today they're here in Westminster Abbey in this beautiful casket, designed by the great architect Christopher Wren.

And the inscription on the casket lays the blame pretty squarely at Richard's door.

It says he suffocated the princes with a pillow and then usurped the throne.

Richard III was dug up under a car park in Leicester in 2012.

And his bones were subjected to every scientific test you could think of.

Well, this casket hasn't been opened since the 1930s, almost 100 years.

When it was opened it was found there were two children's skeletons inside, but since then no permission has been granted to subject whatever's in there to modern scientific testing.

And until that permission is granted, the mystery of the princes in the Tower will continue.

Even if the riddle of the princes in the Tower is never solved, their story will continue to be one of the most notorious in British history, and an important part of the legacy of the Tower of London.

But one thing is for certain, the princes were not the first prisoners to suffer in this castle, and they certainly weren't the last.

Two million people flock here every year to visit one of history's most notorious prisons.

But where's the prison.

There are no dungeons here, there's not even a torture chamber.

But okay, over the years plenty of people have been locked up in this fortress, ranging from Ranulf Flambard the first prisoner, who escaped, to the Kray Twins who were banged up here for avoiding military service.

So, there are reasons why, "Being sent to the Tower," has become one of history's most resonant phrases.

But in the Tudor years, the Tower earned a new reputation.

It wasn't just a place where people were banged up.

It was a place where people were sent to be executed.

And one English king was particularly fond of sending his victims here.

This massive suit of armor was once owned by England's most famous King Henry VIII and you look at it, well, it tells you everything you need to know about Henry's self-image.It's big, it's manly, it's virile.

It all points very obviously to one place.

And this was owned by Henry towards the end of his life, in 1540, when he was fat, and grumpy, and ill, and tyrannical.

And that's the Henry I associate with the Tower of London.

Because it wasn't his fortress, or his palace or even his playground.

It was his personal prison where he locked up those he thought were traitors.

Henry executed dozens of people during his reign.

Dukes and Countesses, monks and nuns, old women, young men, wives, cousins, and chief ministers.

But no one sums up Henry's frenzied and sometimes indiscriminate blood lust quite so much as one of his most faithful servants, Thomas More.

Thomas More was a true Renaissance man.

He was Lord Chancellor and one of Henry's closest advisors.

He was also a deeply spiritual figure, a philosopher, a lawyer, and a famous writer.

And his intellectual principles would set him up for a monstrous showdown with his monarch.

In 1533, Henry divorced the first of his six wives, Catherine of Aragon, and married the second, Anne Boleyn.

More thoroughly disapproved, and although he knew it would enrage Henry, he resigned from the House of Commons in protest.

As a devout and principled Christian, More couldn't accept Henry's decision to defy the Pope by divorcing Catherine and taking Anne as his new queen.

But, as one of the King's most powerful ministers, he didn't want to antagonize Henry either, so initially, he bit his lip and kept quiet.

But then, parliament passed an act of succession, confirming Anne as Henry's Queen and any sons she should have as Henry's heirs and the King demanded that everybody, including More, take an oath to support it.

Caught between his loyalty to the church and his allegiance to the King, More found himself in a desperate and impossible position.

Did he follow the orders of his master, or stay true to his basic Christian principles?

Here at All Saints, his private chapel in Chelsea, he prayed for guidance, but when he was summoned before the archbishop of Canterbury, he was given an ultimatum.

Support the King or suffer the consequences.

More was presented with the Act of Succession.

And he read it to himself in silence.

Then he was presented with the Oath of Allegiance.

He read it in silence.

But, he couldn't swear the Oath.

And so, to use one of the most infamous phrases in British history, he was, "Sent to the Tower".

There's some debate about where More was held.

But, many people think it was here in the basement of the Bell Tower, next to the modern Constable's residence which is normally off limits to the public.

In a way, this bare cell with its sandstone walls and high vaulted ceilings, feels like a chapel.

And as a prisoner of conscience, More spent months here, reflecting on his life, and possibly, his death.

At first, More's imprisonment wasn't too bad.

He was allowed to read and write.

He could have visitors, he could take walks in the grounds of the Tower.

This was more like a civilized house arrest than being chucked in a dungeon.

But within months, parliament had passed yet another act, making Henry the absolute head of the Church in England and cutting the country off from the authority of the Pope.

The pressure on More was building.

They may have been lifelong friends, but Henry was determined to break More's spirit and force him to obey.

As one of the most highly respected men in all of England, edged slowly towards his doom, More himself described what happened next.

JONES: So, Andrea, what is this collection we have here?

We have a set of 16th century transcripts of the works of Thomas More.

JONES: God, there's so much of it.

So, now we know what More's been accused of, but what was his punishment, because that's in here as well, isn't it?

CLARKE: So we are told that he's going to lose all of his properties.

His land, "Shall be deemed and adjudged "in our said sovereign and his heirs in like estate "form and condition as they were before."

So what we're saying here is that everything that Henry has given to Thomas More over the years, and all being in favor, is now being taken back.

-He's ruined.

-Yeah.

He loses absolutely everything.

But, what about More personally?

Halfway down this page we read, "And also shall suffer such pains of imprisonment of his body."

So, that great old phrase, "Sent to the Tower..." -Mmm.

-That's the rest of More's life.

Exactly.

JONES: The ruthlessness of Henry, I suppose.

Absolutely, and by this stage he was a complete monster, he really was.

JONES: More was visited twice in May and June 1535, in an attempt to get him to take the Oath of Allegiance.

But, he saw this as a real dilemma.

On the one hand he was a devout Catholic.

On the other, a loyal subject of the King.

And he said, "This act of parliament is like a two-edged sword.

"For if a man shall swear one way, it would confound his soul, "if he swears the other way it would confound his body."

In other words he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

In the end, when he was pressed to take the oath, More remained silent.

On the 1st of July 1535, Thomas More was taken from the Tower of London to Westminster, where he was tried for high treason.

His accusers deliberated for just 15 minutes before giving their verdict.

More was found guilty of treason and he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

He was taken by boat downriver to the Tower to await his fate.

Having defied his king, More was sent back to this room to contemplate his awful fate.

On the day before he was due to be executed, he wrote one final letter to his beloved daughter Margaret.

What does More have to say, because this is the day before -he was going to be executed?

-Mmm.

Mmm.

It must be quite an emotional letter for him to have written -to his daughter.

-Yeah.

CLARKE: He says, "I never liked your manner toward me "better than when you kissed me last for I love when daughterly love "and dear charity hath no leisure "to look to worldly courtesy."

God, that's incredibly -touching, isn't it?

-Mmm.

CLARKE: So he's referring to just after his trial, when he's been sentenced to death and he's being escorted back to the Tower.

And Margaret has been waiting, sees him, breaks through all the soldiers to get to him and to give him one last hug and to kiss him, and that obviously gave him great... Uplifted him and gave him great comfort.

She really seemed to understand him, and she seemed to really understand why he felt unable to swear the Oath of Supremacy and she supported him in that decision.

And I think, you know, we're kind of sitting in front of More putting pen to paper, imprisoned in the Tower of London.

It doesn't get much more, um, spine-tingling than that, really.

JONES: At 9:00 the next morning, Thomas More was brought from this cell to meet his fate.

In the end he wasn't hanged, drawn and quartered, but simply beheaded as a traitor.

His final words were, "The King's good servant, but God's first."

Thomas More's execution was only the beginning of Henry's reign of terror.

And throughout the Tudor years, plenty of other noble men and women found themselves locked up here, waiting for the executioner's call.

None were more famous than Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, just one year later.

Anne Boleyn stayed in the royal apartments here at the Tower of London on the night before her coronation as Henry VIII's Queen.

Three years later, she was back on the morning of her execution.

Now for Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I, it worked the other way round.

She was a prisoner here at the Tower, of her sister, Mary I. Within a matter of months, she was leaving the Tower on the morning of her own coronation.

In Tudor times, treachery was a fickle concept and today's king, queen, or royal confidante could easily be tomorrow's traitor.

But, fear of the monarchy would begin to wane.

Less than a century after More's execution, the balance of power in England would shift.

Soon the dominance of the Tower of London would be overshadowed by the will of the people.

From Norman times till the Tudor years, the Tower of London had been the focus for royal power.

But, by the 19th century, it was starting to lose its grip.

This was no longer the main arena for political battles.

Further up the River Thames, the Houses of Parliament now took center stage.

Now, the Tower took on another role.

It began to attract tourists.

And they weren't just here to inspect the ramparts.

One of the main attractions was some of its more exotic inhabitants.

Because it wasn't just humans who were locked up in the Tower.

This is a story about a bear.

"And though the bear, which killed the child, -"escaped at this time... -(BOTH CHUCKLE) "He was afterward by command of the King "baited to death with dogs, upon a stage."

Well, that gives us an insight into the cheery humor of the 18th century, doesn't it?

Oh, dear.

What's amazing is this tiny, little book is one of the first known guidebooks to the Tower of London, and it's full of miniature portraits of animals.

It's extraordinary to think that for 600 years, the Tower was home to the menagerie or London's main zoo.

For more than 900 years, since the time of William the Conqueror, the Tower of London has been a royal palace.

Now royals get a lot of gifts.

In fact the present royal family has received a bear, two sloths, a baby crocodile, an elephant, a horse, and a canary.

In 1252, the King of Norway presented the Tower with a very exotic gift.

It's very own polar bear.

Now the royal records show the purchase of a muzzle, a chain, and a long length of rope so the bear could go fishing for its own food in the river.

England's medieval kings needed somewhere secure to put all the animals they received.

Naturally, they chose the strongest castle in the land.

The Tower of London.

Over the years, the Tower was home to everything from monkeys to Barbary lions and my favorite, a pair of dog- faced baboons.

In the 18th century, the Tower of London opened its menagerie, or zoo,to the public.

To get in, you had to pay three pennies or bring along a cat or dog to feed to the lions.

By 1828, the Tower held over 280 animals.

But one man was not impressed.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington was the heroic general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

Now aged nearly 60, he was made constable of the Tower.

The old soldier had plans for the great fortress, and they didn't include wild animals, or the noisy crowds that came to see them.

(INDISTINCT TALKING) As far as the Duke of Wellington was concerned, the Tower was a barracks for troops, not a circus or a zoo.

On top of that the place was filthy.

The water in the moat was fetid and there was cholera among the troops.

Now Wellington was a founding member of the Zoological Society and to his mind, cleaning this place up meant the animals had to go.

The Duke of Wellington knew that housing wild animals in a medieval fortress was an accident waiting to happen.

And he was right.

In 1835, when one of the lions allegedly mauled a soldier, the Iron Duke had had enough.

He relocated the entire menagerie to Regent's Park, where it became one of the world's most famous collections of animals, London Zoo.

Wellington got rid of the animals and the mint.

He drained the moat and he turned the Tower back into a proper, shipshape military barracks.

They named a building after him, where they now keep the Crown Jewels.

But you know what?

The ultimate irony is, the Duke of Wellington hated tourists.

Wellington proposed that the public should be kept out of the Tower of London.

He called them a nuisance and a threat to security.

Fortunately for the millions of tourists who come here every year, he never got his way.

For nearly 900 years, the Tower has dominated London and fascinated the world.

Today it remains the most famous British castle of them all.

In the end the story of the Tower is about the mob and it always has been.

The Tower was built to frighten and subjugate them.

It's been used to appease them, locking up criminals and foreigners and of course, it's been used to amuse them, whether coming to the zoo or going out to Tower Hill to watch traitors being beheaded.

And it still amuses them now.

A royal fortress, invaded every day by thousands of ordinary people pouring in off the streets of London.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)