THE TOWER OF LONDON HAS A SECRET MEDIEVAL WALL PAINTING

And they let me have a look

This week I went to the Tower of London to do a few great things.

One of those was attending the opening of The Tower Remembers exhibition: a revival of the incredible ceramic poppies display that filled the moat in 2018, and has been reimagined this year to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

Another was to have a peer in an ongoing archaeological dig outside the Tower chapel where Anne Boleyn is buried.

A lift is due to be installed to improve access to the chapel, but the archaeologists studying the hole keep finding skeletons. They let me get into the dig site. It was very much a fun thing to do.

What I wasn’t expecting, however, was to have an impromptu viewing of something I had heard was tucked away off the main route in the Tower, but which is almost never shown to the public.

We didn’t even get to see it when we made the Tower episode of Secrets of Great British Castles.

It’s the most beautiful fourteenth-century wall painting, hidden in a room in the Byward Tower. It just about took my breath away. But I remembered to take photos… Check it out.