Journal 27 July - The Tower of London

On Saturday we went to the Tower of London.  Here is my journal writing:

Here are some photos of the things we did and learned there...

Here are the bros.  Behind us is the Tower of London.

Armour

Did you know that there was armour for horses as well?  In the Armoury we saw lots of cool armour.

Hands on Zone

In the White Tower of the Tower of London we got to do lots of hands on activities.  

In this activity we got to look at objects they had found in the castle and then push a button.  A light would show us a path to where they found that object on a model of the castle.

I got to hold the handle of a real medieval sword and lift it up.  It felt very heavy!

I played a game where I got to pretend I was riding on a horse and using my sword like a real Knight.  First I practiced by slicing up cabbages.  

Then I rode on a horse and did course where I had to hit targets.

Next I got to fire a cannon.  I pushed a button for each of the four steps to get the cannon ready.  It showed me a video of what they did.  I pushed the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4.  Then the cannon was ready!  

I pushed number 5 and it blew!  Finn was standing in the way of the cannon so it boom-chaka-lakaed him!

To see we would would look like if were dressed up like Knights Finn and I stood behind a picture and poked our faces through.  This armour was bright and white because it was fake.

Next I had to get King Henry the 8th Dressed.  I had to drag his clothes onto him in the right order.  But I got it wrong.  King Henry was very rude and called me an idiot!  That wasn't very nice!!!  But I learned at the Tower that King Henry wasn't very nice.  He had six wives and this little rhyme I learned told me what happened to them.

"King Henry the Eighth had 6 sorry wives,
Some may say he ruined their lives.
Divorced, beheaded and died
Divorced, beheaded, survived!"

So he divorced two of his wives, killed two of his wives by having their heads cut off, one got sick  and died and only one survived!

Then I got to do Archery.  Every time I was a bullseye.  It took a lot of strength to pull the string back.  (It was next to a mirror, so in this photo there are two of me.  Army of mes - ATTACK!)

Then I got to decide how I would build a castle.  I got to choose whether to build on high or low ground, to build with mud, stone or wood, and whether to have high or low walls.  

Then a whole entire army attacked my castle and I could see if it survived.  

Finally after a couple of mistakes I learned the best way to build a castle is to make it be on a hill, build it out of stone and have high walls.  My castle was certified for 1000 years!

Escaping the Castle

Next we did an activity about escaping the castle.  This man who was a gaoler and his wife called us over and told us we were prisoners and we had to stand by the fence.  Uh oh!














Next we walked around the castle and talked to different prisoners and they told us their stories.  Some of were in horrible cells but some got nice rooms and got to walk freely around the castle.


This man was imprisoned because he disobeyed the King by marrying someone the King didn't want him to marry.  











We heard lots of stories about how people escaped the Castle.  One man dressed up as a girl, one got the guards drunk and them lowered himself out of the window using a rope smuggled to him in a barrel of wine.

This prisoner (above) called Father John Gerard told us how he made friends with the guard so he gave him oranges. Then he wrote an escape plan to his friends using orange juice. It was invisible, but when his friends heated it over a candle they could see the writing. 

Fun Facts

At lunch time we read the guide book which had so much cool information!  Here are some fun facts we learned. (In the back of this photo you can see some little holes shaped like crosses in the wall.  These were used for firing arrows at your enemy.)

To keep the tower safe it is surrounded by two circular walls.  One has 10 towers around it.  It also has a moat that used to be filled with water and fish for people to eat.  Now it is a patch of grass.

The White tower is 27 metres high and the walls are more than 4 metres thick.  In the entrance there are murder holes for dropping missiles or boiling water on to enemies.

• The entrance had a portcullis which is a gate which can go up and down, made of metal with spikes.  

• The Palace used to have a Menagerie - that means lots of interesting animals.  At different times they had leopards, lions, panthers, an elephant and even a polar bear.  Now there are metal models of the animals.

• There are 6 ravens kept at the tower as there is an old story that if the ravens leave the Tower the Tower will fall and so will the Kingdom.  They trim their wings painlessly so they can't fly away.