Salt Tower

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Salt Tower from outside the fortress
Location of the Salt Tower (22) in the Tower of London

The Salt Tower is a tower in the fortress complex of the Tower of London . The tower, presumably built in 1238, stands on the south-eastern edge of the fortress in the inner fortress ring. It is the only remaining tower of the Tower from this construction phase, which has three instead of the usual two floors. It is made of hard limestone from Kent (so-called Kentish Ragstone ). The upper areas were rebuilt in the 19th century.

The tower has the shape of a three-quarter cylinder that goes from north to west. In the west there is a younger transition to the corridor on the inner wall. In the northeast there is a rectangular turret in which the stairwell is located. In the south and east there are remains of a former connection to the outer fortress wall. The entrance to the Salt Tower is on the ground floor and leads through a pentagonal chamber. This is connected to another pentagonal chamber through the stairs. In the upper chamber there is a medieval fireplace and a separate small cloakroom. The window comes from the restoration by Anthony Salvin in the years 1856–1857. The restoration of the 19th century can be seen in particular at the top of the wall, which hardly bears any resemblance to the layered masonry that originally existed here.

The Salt Tower was the second major renovation project that Anthony Salvin received at the Tower of London after the Beauchamp Tower . It established his extensive work of medieval restoration of the entire tower. After various buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Salt Tower were torn down in 1846, it became clear that parts of the stones in the Salt Tower had been carelessly replaced by brick over the centuries. After the inspection of the Salt Tower, Prince Consort Albert demanded a comprehensive restoration of the entire fortress under an overall plan. He commissioned Salvin with this work, whose first work was the Salt Tower.

Among other things, the tower was used to store salt . That is why today it is particularly suffering from the consequential damage that salt causes in rock. In the late 20th century, the top 20 to 25 millimeters of the walls were already weathered in some areas. Extensive desalination work was carried out in 1974, which was able to reduce the salt content in the masonry by 57 to 76%. However, it was already apparent after the work that salt was pulling out of the foundation and the earth, so that this is probably not a permanent result.

The Salt Tower was one of the towers in the fortress in which prisoners in the tower were regularly locked. Among other things, the Scottish King John Balliol sat here . In the 16th century it housed together with the Martin Tower most of the Catholic clergy who were imprisoned in the Tower of London as part of the religious conflicts of the time. In the Salt Tower, one of the clergymen left the most outstanding of all engravings by prisoners: In 1561 Hugh Draper carved a detailed astronomical clock into the wall.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Geoffrey Parnell: The Tower of London 1993 Batsford London ISBN 0-7134-6864-5 , p. 28
  2. ^ A b Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1, The city of London, 1997, London: Penguin. ISBN 0140710922 , pp. 367-368
  3. ↑ Geoffrey Parnell: The Tower of London 1993 Batsford London ISBN 0-7134-6864-5 , p. 98
  4. ↑ David M. Look: Review of Desalination of Stone: A Case Study by MJ Bowley Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1976), pp. 78-79

Web links

Commons : Salt Tower  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '26.67 "  N , 0 ° 4' 30.08"  W.