Geomantic feature of the ancient Tower of London, Secret face of Britain’s Capital City August 22, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Destination, France, Hotels, Ireland, London, Sightseeing, Tour, Trails , trackbackMost people today think of the Tower as the sinister place built by William the Conqueror where prisoners were kept and tortured, and where illustrious heads rolled, including those of Sir Thomas More, Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey. Over the centuries, in addition to being such a notorious place of confinement, the Tower has served as a garrison, a palace, a zoo, a mint and an observatory. The Tower continues to house the Crown Jewels and other royal regalia, but this important spot in London’s geography goes back much further, and is referred to in the medieval Welsh texts known collectively as The Mabinogion, which record themes much older. To the Celtic Britons, the site on which the Tower stands was Bryn Gwyn, the White Mount, ‘White‘ meaning holy. The White Tower, the central keep of the site and the original part of the structure to be built, recalls this appellation.
The sanctity of Bryn Gwyn is established in the story from The Mabinogion called ‘Branwen Daughter of Llyr’. It tells how, in a disastrous adventure in Ireland in which the sovereignty of Britain is jeopardized, the legendary god-king Bran is mortally wounded. He instructs the surviving seven men of his army to cut off his head, which he predicts will remain incorrupt, and to transport it from Ireland `to the White Mount in London, and bury it with its face towards France‘ and `no plague would ever come across the sea to this Island’ as long as the head was there interred.’
The group, who, with Branwen (Bran’s sister), formed the ‘Assembly of the Head‘, was on the road for many years, being distracted and enchanted en route. Bran- wen died early on from a broken heart. Eventually, however, they made it to the White Mount and buried Bran’s head. Much is encoded in this multi-layered story — relics of the Celtic head cult, the matter of sovereignty and other themes — that is outside the brief of this account. (It is perhaps just curious coincidence that the Tower is so associated with beheading.) A tradition that is an echo of this legend states that if the ravens of the Tower should ever leave, Britain will be at risk of invasion. To guard against this the ravens’ wings are clipped! The connection is that ‘Bran‘ means raven in Welsh.
Other legends establishing the importance of the mound in mythic memory tell that Brutus, the legendary founder of London (’New Troy’), and the road-building King Molmutius were buried there. And King Arthur, wishing to be solely responsible for defending Britain, had Bran’s head dug up — not a good idea, as history turned out! As Caitlin Matthews puts it, the precincts of the Tower are ‘redolent with the overwhelming potency of sovereignty’
There is a well deep within the foundations of the White Tower. It is stone lined and thought to date to at least Roman times. In her Prehistoric London E. 0. Gordon noted that a similar well ‘of unknown antiquity under Sadlers Wells Theatre’ may have been a ‘telescope well’. Such shafts were used in many parts of the world to assist the observation of the heavens by cutting out the ambient glare of the moon or other illumination. It is thought that the Iron Age Druidic priesthood used such devices for their astronomy. If the Tower shaft was a telescope well, then, as Janet and Colin Bord point out, the ‘tradition was continued, for the north-east pinnacle of the White Tower . . . was an observatory until the seventeenth century when the Royal Observatory was built further down the river at Greenwich.”
Further astronomical ruminations were propounded by John Griffith. Writing in the appendices to Prehistoric London, he suggested that the legend of Bran’s head encoded an astronomical message, and calculated that an alignment from the Tower to Parliament Hill (or ‘Llandin’ according to Gordon, a prominent height on Hampstead Heath topped by a prehistoric mound) gave a summer solstice azimuth. Griffith went further and suggested that these two mounds plus the Tot Hill at Westminster and Penton (Ten’, head, ‘ton’, sacred mound) were observatories, with various astronomical alignments associated with them. The landscape configuration of the mounds according to Griffith’s measurements includes Gospel Oak, a place-name that hints at a sacred tree location, and Primrose Hill, another prominent spot which formerly had at least one mound associated with it.
The geomantic significance of the White Mount is shown in its association with other key ancient locations of London. We have already noted that it falls in line with Southwark Cathedral and Westminster, and another alignment links it to other major ancient sites of the city. This runs from the precincts of the Tower to Ludgate Hill.
Starting at the Tower, the line passes across Tower Hill, where a scaffold stood until the eighteenth century, and through All Hallows by the Tower. Beneath the present church are remnants of Roman flooring and fragments of a seventh-century Saxon church. Pieces of Saxon and medieval crosses have also been uncovered. This was evidently an ancient sacred site of some importance.
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