A vast castle and ancient fortress located on the north bank of the Thames —just along from its equally impressive namesake, Tower Bridge—the Tower of London is one of England’s most famous and most recognizable landmarks, as well as one of the capital’s most popular tourist attractions.
Built in the 11th century, today the Tower of London is an official royal palace under direct ownership of the British Crown and is well known as the storehouse and exhibition space of the royal family’s Crown Jewels. The Jewels have been on display in their current location, in the Tower’s specialist Jewel House, since 1994—but incredibly, the tradition of keeping them at the Tower dates back as far as the 13th century.
Over its almost 1,000 year history, however, the Tower has been used as a lot more than a safe house for the royal jewel collection. In fact, the Tower has operated under several different guises down the centuries—including as a prison, an armory, a public records office, a treasury, and even a royal mint, where new coins and cash could be produced under the watchful eye of the monarch and their court. But of all the Tower’s myriad uses over the years, perhaps its most surprising is that it was once home to a vast medieval menagerie. And perhaps one of the Tower’s most surprising inhabitants in that time was a gigantic polar bear.
The first monarch known to have kept animals in the menagerie at the Tower of London is believed to be the medieval King John, who ruled England from 1199 until his death in 1216, one year after the signing of the Magna Carta. It was during John’s reign that a series of payroll records cataloged at the Tower makes reference to a staff of “lion keepers” who were employed at the Tower in the years 1210-1212. Precisely what happened to King John’s lions is unclear; as is precisely how prepared his 13th-century courtiers were to look after some gigantic man-eating cats! But when John’s successor, Henry III, was presented with a further three leopards as a wedding gift from the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, in 1235, he decided that all these extraordinary creatures should henceforth form the centerpieces of a new exotic Royal Menagerie, housed entirely at the Tower of London.
In the later part of his reign in the mid-1200s, Henry oversaw the construction of a considerable extension to the Tower of London purely intended to house wild animals, and throughout his time on the throne, the number of animals kept at the Tower grew considerably. His leopards and King John’s lions were eventually joined by a pair of European lynxes, monkeys, a pack of wild dogs and hounds, and even an elephant—perhaps the first elephant not only seen in England but in all of northern Europe— that was a gift from the King of France, Louis IX, in 1255. But of all the creatures in the royal collection, King Henry’s polar bear was by far the most impressive.
The bear was added to the collection in 1251, when the Norwegian king, Haakon IV, gifted it to Henry to cement a friendly alliance between the two great kingdoms. The polar bear understandably caused quite a stir in London at the time—not least because King Henry decided that it should not remain locked in its cage in the Tower all day, but should be allowed down to the banks of the river Thames each day to swim, bathe, exercise, and catch fish.
As a result, in 1252 the King issued an order for an iron muzzle and chain leash, which the bear’s fearless keepers were then left to somehow fit to the creature and thereby lead through the streets beside the Tower and down to the riverside every morning. Once the bear had had its fill of fish and had duly enjoyed enough time frolicking in the water, it would then be hauled back out of the river, back up to the Tower, and returned to its enclosure for the remainder of the day.
Unfortunately, we do not know for how many years this daily bear show took place, as the fates of many of the animals that inhabited the Tower of London in the early days of its menagerie are unknown. We do know, however, that a royal menagerie of some description was maintained at the Tower of London for the next six centuries, right up to the reign of Queen Victoria in the mid-1800s. In that time, the Kings’ bear, leopards, and lions were further joined by a cheetah, hyenas, tigers, kangaroos, jackals, eagles, ostriches, camels, wolves, zebras, pumas, an alligator, and even a troop of baboons—one of whom, according to a contemporary description, even learned how to smoke a clay pipe.
Not all of the Tower’s animals, however, appear to have been kept under as strict control as Henry’s polar bear. In 1686 a lady named Mary Jenkinson who worked in the keepers’ house at the menagerie, took one of her acquaintances in to see the Tower’s lions. When one of the lions reportedly stretched out a paw towards her, Mary unwisely went to stroke it. According to a report, the lion then “catched her by the middle of the arm with his claws and mouth,” and wrenched her arm clean off her body. Despite a desperate struggle to save her, Mary was killed.
Other incidents recorded over the years include a wolf that escaped and killed the pet dog of a Sergeant Cropper who worked at the tower; a baboon that somehow came into possession of a cannonball and threw it at a soldier, killing him; a boa constrictor that escaped its enclosure and throttled a zookeeper; and a young boy in 1810, who had his leg torn off by another baboon; incredibly, there were no enclosures at all in the Tower’s monkey house, meaning members of the public could walk right up to the animals (and, it seems, vice versa).
By that time, interest in the menagerie was dwindling, and concerns over both the welfare of the animals and the expense of keeping so many of them at the Tower led to the establishment of what is now London Zoo in 1826. The final 150 animals kept at the Tower went on to become the zoo’s very first exhibits, while their housings and enclosures at the Tower were eventually demolished and their equipment auctioned off. Today, nothing remains of the Tower’s menagerie except for a few life-size sculptures of some of its most famous animal residents.