Jewel Tower
The Jewel Tower is a 14th-century surviving element of the Palace of Westminster, in London, England. It was built between 1365 and 1366, under the direction of William of Sleaford and Henry de Yevele, to house the personal treasure of King Edward III. The original tower was a three-storey, crenellated stone building which occupied a secluded part of the palace and was protected by a moat linked to the River Thames. The ground floor featured elaborate sculpted vaulting, described by historian Jeremy Ashbee as "an architectural masterpiece". The tower continued to be used for storing the monarch's treasure and personal possessions until 1512, when a fire in the palace caused King Henry VIII to relocate his court to the nearby Palace of Whitehall.
At the end of the 16th century the House of Lords began to use the tower to store its parliamentary records, building a house alongside it for the use of the parliamentary clerk, and extensive improvements followed in 1621. The tower continued as the Lords' records office through the 18th century and several renovations were carried out to improve its fire-proofing and comfort, creating the present appearance of the tower. It was one of only four buildings to survive the burning of Parliament in 1834, after which the records were moved to the Victoria Tower, built for the purpose of storing archives, and part of the new neo-Gothic Palace of Westminster.
In 1869 the Jewel Tower was taken over by the newly formed Standard Weights and Measures Department, which used it for storing and testing official weights and measures. The tower became less and less suitable for this work as passing vehicular traffic increased, and by 1938 the department had given up on it in favor of other facilities. In 1948 the building was placed into the care of the Ministry of Works, which repaired the damage inflicted to the tower during the Second World War and restored the building extensively, clearing the surrounding area and opening the tower to tourists. Today the Jewel Tower is managed by English Heritage and receives about 30,000 visitors annually.
History
14th–16th centuries
Purpose
The Jewel Tower was built within the Palace of Westminster between 1365 and 1366, on the instructions of King Edward III, to hold his personal treasure. Edward had broadly three types of treasure: his ceremonial regalia, which was usually kept at the Tower of London or held by the Abbot of Westminster; the jewellery and plate belonging to the Crown, which was kept by the Royal Treasurer at Westminster Abbey; and his personal collection of jewels and plate. English monarchs during this period used their personal jewels and plate as a substitute for cash, drawing on them to fund their military campaigns, or giving them as symbolic political gifts. Edward accumulated what historian Jenny Stratford has described as a "vast store of jewels and plate", and his collection of personal treasure was at its greatest during the 1360s.Edward had managed this last category of personal treasure through an organisation called the Privy Wardrobe. The Keeper of the Privy Wardrobe was responsible for guarding and recording the king's belongings, and dispatching particular items around the kingdom, potentially giving them as gifts to the monarch's family and friends. The Privy Wardrobe was initially based in the Tower of London in Edward's reign and became focused on handling the supplies for his campaigns in France. This probably encouraged the King to decide to build a new tower in Westminster to host a separate branch of the Privy Wardrobe specifically to manage his personal jewels and plate. In practice, this branch also managed the clothes, vestments and similar goods belonging to the royal household – effectively, the non-military parts of the King's property.
Construction
William of Sleaford was put in charge of the tower project as a whole; he was the clerk and surveyor of the king's works within the Palace of Westminster and the Tower of London, and became the Keeper of the Westminster Privy Wardrobe. The Jewel Tower was designed and built by Henry de Yevele, a prominent royal architect, supported by a team of masons he commissioned for both this project and a neighbouring piece of work to build a new clock tower nearby. Hugh Herland was taken on as the chief carpenter for both projects. The payments for the project were recorded on an long parchment roll, which is now held in the Public Record Office.Stone was brought in for the two towers: 98 boat-loads of rough stone and of dressed stone from Maidstone; 469 cart-loads from Reigate; from Devon and from Normandy. Timber was brought from Surrey, red floor tiles from Flanders and of glass purchased for the Jewel Tower alone. A contractor was employed to fix iron grilles to the windows, and 18 locks were purchased to secure the various doors. A main workforce of 19 stonemasons, up to 10 carpenters and other specialised tradesmen worked on the site, and in July 1366, a team of 23 labourers dug out the new moat over the course of a month.
The tower was constructed in the secluded south-west corner of the Palace of Westminster, overlooking the king's garden in the Privy Palace, the most private part of Westminster. The tower was positioned so as not to encroach on the existing palace, but this meant it was built on top of land owned by the neighbouring Westminster Abbey. It took six years for the abbey to convince the king to agree to compensate them for this annexation. William Usshborne, one of Edward's officials, was blamed for this and, when he later choked to death while eating a fish from a pond in the palace, the monks argued that this was divine justice for his role in the affair.
The tower was linked to the external walls of the palace, and further secured by its moat, which was connected to the River Thames by a channel. The top of its walls were crenelated, and in order to prevent potential intruders there were no windows on the outside of the tower at the ground floor level. The keeper would have worked from the first floor, and Edward's treasure itself was kept on the second floor, in locked chests.
Later medieval use
The Jewel Tower continued to be used by Edward's successors for storing treasure and personal possessions, until 1512, when a fire in Westminster Palace forced the royal court to relocate to Whitehall, along with the jewels and plate from the tower. The king, Henry VIII, did not return to Westminster and instead built a new palace at Whitehall, but he continued to use the tower, then called "Tholde Juelhous" for storing his wider household effects, including expensive cloths, linens, royal chess sets and walking sticks, but these appear to have been removed from the tower after his death.The Jewel Tower diminished in importance; probably during the 16th century, the palace walls on either side of the building were demolished, and part of the moat was filled in during 1551. By the 1590s, the tower had begun to be used both for the storage of the Lords' records and as a house for the parliamentary clerk. In 1600, a three-storey timber extension was built on the side of the tower for the clerk's use, as part of a wider renovation of the tower at a cost of £166, and the complex began to be termed the Parliament Office rather than the Jewel Tower. The ground floor of the tower may have begun to be used as a kitchen and scullery for the new house at around this time.
17th–18th centuries
In 1621, a subcommittee of the House of Lords concluded that the Lords' record keeping should be improved, and the tower was renovated to improve its storage facilities. The first floor of the tower, used to store the documents, was renovated with brick vaulting, providing better fire protection than the original wooden ceiling, by Thomas Hicks at a cost of £6. The chamber was further protected by a new iron door.The parliamentary clerk continued to live alongside the tower, except during the interregnum of 1649 and 1660, when the House of Lords was temporarily abolished. The sewer feeding into the moat was blocked up around the middle of the century, and the moat, which previously seems to have been kept clean, was allowed to gradually fill up with debris, despite complaints from the House of Lords that this put the Jewel Tower at greater risk of fire and thieves.
By 1716, the tower was reported to Parliament as being in a "ruinous condition", and an enquiry concluded that repairs and restoration should go ahead at a cost of £870. The work commenced under Nicholas Hawksmoor, the Surveyor General, but staff turnover in the Office of Works and accusations of corruption slowed the work. Cut-backs were made, in particular to the plans to strengthen the roof of the tower with fire-resilient brick vaults; despite this, the costs totalled £1,118 by the end of the project in 1719. The outside of the tower was reworked to form its modern appearance, with plainer, larger windows and a simpler parapet, and a new chimney to keep members of the House of Lords warm while they were reading the records. Specialised wooden cupboards and shelves were installed on the first floor to hold the documents. Further work was carried out in 1726 to improve the security and safety of the tower, particularly from the threat of fire, at a cost of £508.
File:Old Palace Yard, Westminster, 1720.jpg|thumb|300px|left|Old Palace Yard in 1720, showing the tower at far left and the east end of Westminster Abbey at centre
At some point in the 18th century, possibly in 1753, the upper and lower halves of the tower were divided into two separate areas. The spiral staircase from the ground floor kitchen to the upper floors, holding the records, was removed, and a window on the first floor was turned into a doorway so that the upper floors could be accessed from the neighbouring house. A fire-resistant stone vaulted ceiling was installed in on the first floor, possibly also in 1753 at a cost of £350.
An investigation by the Board of Works in 1751 concluded that the parliamentary clerk's house was in a poor condition and unsuitable for habitation. In particular, it lacked a kitchen and scullery, and the cooking was still being carried out in the ground floor rooms of the Jewel Tower. Two three-storey brick houses – later titled 6–7 Old Palace Yard – were built in its place between 1754 and 1755, possibly by the architect Kenton Couse, at a cost of £2,432. The Jewel Tower was accessed from the Old Palace Yard through a central passageway that ran between the houses, and a range of subsidiary buildings were built behind the houses, joining them and the tower, while the tower continued to be used for preparing food.