London is for History-Lovers

London is most definitely a tourist city, which is easily seen by some of the food prices in restaurants. Of course, you’re probably not going to London for the food, necessarily—you’re going because it’s London, and there’s a lot of history to see here. The interesting thing is that the history you’ll find in Britain might not even be British.

One of the first places I went while I was in London was the British Museum. This place is as interesting as it is massive—there are thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of artifacts dating from modern times back to the oldest piece in the entire museum: a stone tool dating back 1.8 million years. As I was walking around, I kept having a post-colonial thought crop up in the back of my mind: This museum is full of stuff that rich, white men took from other cultures.

I was so mesmerized by the British Museum that I wasn’t paying close attention to where I was walking—I simply walked from expansive room to expansive room, snapping pictures as I went. There probably is a set order in which you can cover the museum, but I had a whole week in London, so if I had spare time, I went back to the museum and looked through more exhibits. It also became kind of a shelter for me, since it rained frequently during my trip (well duh, it’s London).

The rooms are set up chronologically in some parts of the museum and culturally in other parts. I ended up walking backward through time during one expedition to the museum. I went from renaissance Europe back into medieval Europe (YAY!), wandered through a room full of clocks, then found my way into some ancient Roman stuff. That led me to ancient Greek stuff, and the next room took me back even further.

You can literally spend two full days of a trip to London walking around in the British Museum. If you’re a history buff, you’ll want to be here like flies on a gut-wagon. The museum normally has special exhibits that change every few months—while I was there, it was an exhibit of sexuality and eroticism in Japanese folk-art, or something like that. Entrance to the whole museum is free, but the special exhibits actually had an entrance fee—I didn’t go into any of the special exhibits, though, because I was just exhausted after looking through the place for seven or eight hours my first day.

Another really awesome place for anyone interested with history is Westminster Abbey. From the outside, the place is absolutely gorgeous, and the architecture is really something to behold. Be prepared for a line, though—I waited outside for about twenty minutes before I even got to the front door. There is an entrance fee here, but you can always flash a student ID card to get a slightly cheaper rate—instead of paying ₤20, I paid ₤16 or something.

Once I was inside, it looked like tourist central. Walking into the church, there are attendants walking all around in red and green robes, and some of the robe-wearing people were leading tours throughout the building. I didn’t have a tour guide, but there was a table full of what looked like cell phones—these are actually little audio devices that kind of “lead” you through the building, stopping at points of interest or famous people who are buried in Westminster Abbey. These devices are the only electronic devices allowed inside the church, as there is absolutely no photography allowed—the robed attendants were quick to pounce on anyone who was even holding a camera.

The strict “no cameras” rule is because Westminster Abbey isn’t just a place to rake in tourists—it’s still an active house of worship. There are a few priests wandering around in the crowd of people, and there was even an announcement over a PA system inside the building to invite anyone to sit down for a moment of silent prayer. I actually had a conversation with a very nice priest who explained the setup of the front of the church, where all the clergymen sat, who sat where, etc.

I was specifically looking for two graves—one for Richard II, and another for Geoffrey Chaucer. Richard II was king of England during the late-fourteenth century, which means that he was ruling over England at about the same time that Pearl was being written in the northwest midlands of the country. Pearl is considered part of the “Ricardian” era, as Ricardian poetry is a very small, very specific genre of British literature, so I figured I should see his grave. Also, I was looking for Chaucer’s grave, since he’s the father of modern poetry and all. I took a class on Chaucerian poetry a couple of years ago during my graduate work, so again, I figured I should see his grave—I even waited until all the attendants were looking away and a large group of tourists was staring blankly at the floor marking Alfred Lord Tennyson’s grave, and I even touched the stone of Chaucer’s grave. It was magical.

The last big stop for a history buff is the Tower of London. Obviously, this is a huge deal, since the oldest part of the tower was constructed by William the Conqueror. William wanted to show his power over the English people, since they were quite unhappy with the Norman Conquest, as England was, you know, conquested.

Over the centuries, more and more fortifications and buildings were constructed, thus creating the Tower of London that we know today. One of the biggest fortifications was the creation of the moat—in theory, the moat was dug, and the water from the River Thames right outside the Tower of London would flood into the moat and surround all the fortifications, making it totally impregnable. It didn’t work. At high tide, water from the River Thames would flood into the moat—along with loads and loads of disgusting human waste. (“Imagine what that would smell like on a warm summer day,” the tour guide said. “It was Britain’s greatest line of defense! Nobody would want to invade a poo-stained castle!”)

The Tower of London is most famous for the bloodshed that’s occurred there over the centuries under how many different monarchs, I don’t know. We’ll just say “a lot of them.” The most famous of these most famous incidents of bloodshed was probably the murder of the boy princes, ages 9 and 11. The princes were killed in one of the towers, which was then renamed the “Bloody Tower”; after they were killed, their bodies were locked in a trunk and hidden, thereby allowing their uncle, Richard III, to ascend to the throne of England.

The Tower of London is a spectacular place for history people, since there are stories to be told about every corner of the place. I would highly suggest going on one of the free tours—the guide we had was very knowledgeable, and he was a riot to listen to (“If you lived in any part of the British Empire, let’s have a big huzzah!” he told the group, and most of the tour group huzzahed in reply. “And as for you Americans…You don’t get to huzzah with us, because you made your choice!”) The entry into the Tower of London was ₤18, but it’s very well worth it—plus, the guided tour with a snarky guy dressed up as a beefeater is entirely free, so again, well worth the trip.