Dark London: Executioners, Fire and Power

Stand in front of these walls for a moment. They've stood for almost a thousand years. The Tower of London began as a Norman fortress in 1078. But it soon became something far more feared: a prison for the enemies of the Crown. Kings, queens, bishops and nobles were locked up here — people who had power one day, and lost everything the next. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, spent her final nights in this fortress before being beheaded, accused of treason, adultery and incest. Charges most historians today consider fabricated. You didn't need to be guilty here. You just needed to get …

This square, Trinity Square, was London's public scaffold for over three hundred years. Here, in front of crowds of thousands, nobles, traitors, and enemies of the Crown were executed. Execution was a spectacle. People rented windows overlooking the scaffold. Food was sold. Kids climbed onto their parents' shoulders for a better view. Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII's former chancellor, died here in 1535 for refusing to recognize the king as head of the Church. What made this place so effective wasn't just the punishment. It was the message. Thousands went home having seen, with their own eye…

This is London's oldest church. It was founded in the year 675. For centuries, it served a grim purpose: the decapitated bodies of those executed at Tower Hill were kept here temporarily, before being buried without ceremony. No head. Often no name recorded. No public mourning. In the crypt, you can still see part of the original Roman floor, nearly two thousand years old. And there's more: from this church's tower, on September 2nd, 1666, Samuel Pepys climbed up to watch all of London burn. He wrote in his diary that it was the saddest sight of his life. A church that witnessed beheadin…

Look up. This column stands 61 meters tall. That height isn't random: it's the exact distance to Pudding Lane, where the fire this monument commemorates began. The Great Fire of London broke out in the early hours of September 2nd, 1666, in Thomas Farriner's bakery. In four days, it destroyed more than thirteen thousand houses, eighty-seven churches, and left seventy thousand people homeless. Surprisingly, confirmed deaths were few. But the fire came right on the heels of the Great Plague of 1665, which had killed tens of thousands of Londoners. Fire and plague, one after the other. Two y…

You're standing almost exactly where it all started. Here, in Thomas Farriner's bakery, an improperly extinguished oven set fire to the wood and straw around it, just after midnight on September 2nd, 1666. In a city of wooden houses, thatched roofs, and narrow streets, the fire found endless fuel. When the Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Bloodworth, was woken to be told about it, he looked at the first flames and said a line that went down in history: 'A woman might piss it out.' He was completely wrong. Hours later, the fire was already impossible to control. It took four days, and blowing …

This church stood, literally, at the entrance to old London Bridge. For nearly six hundred years, anyone crossing the bridge into the City walked right beneath its tower. And anyone crossing also saw something we'd find unimaginable today: human heads, mounted on spikes, above the bridge's southern gate. These were the heads of executed traitors. They were boiled first, so they wouldn't rot too quickly, and coated in tar. At times more than thirty heads were displayed at once, as a warning to anyone who thought about defying the Crown. The practice lasted from the fourteenth century until…

The bridge you see today isn't the original one. The medieval bridge, the one with heads on spikes, was demolished almost two hundred years ago. But for centuries, this was the only crossing over the Thames in the entire city. It was covered with houses and shops, built directly onto the structure. It was, essentially, just another street, seven stories above the water. And at its southern end, the bridge's Traitors' Gate served the darkest purpose of all: publicly displaying the remains of anyone who had dared defy the king. William Wallace. The leaders of various rebellions. They all end…

This church has a role that seems unimaginable today. The night before an execution at Newgate Prison, a bellman from this church would walk to the condemned's cell and ring a handbell twelve times, right outside the door. Then he'd recite a verse aloud, urging them to repent before dying the next day. That same bell, the 'execution bell,' is still kept inside the church today. The next morning, as the condemned was led from the prison to the scaffold, the church rang its great bells, so the whole city would know an execution was underway. It was a warning. And also, a spectacle. Thousan…

Where London's Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, stands today, Newgate Prison once stood. For more than seven hundred years, Newgate was synonymous with suffering. Cells with no light, diseases that killed more people than any executioner, and a yard known as 'Dead Man's Walk' — the final stretch the condemned walked. Public executions outside Newgate became so popular that grandstands were built to watch them better, and tickets were sold. Charles Dickens attended several as a spectator, and later described those scenes in his novels with a disgust he didn't hide. The prison was dem…

This is the end of the walk, and the site with the longest, bloodiest history in all of London. For centuries, Smithfield was an execution ground, a jousting field, and a livestock market, all at once. Wat Tyler, leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, died here, stabbed in front of the teenage King Richard II. Here, too, during the reign of Queen Mary Tudor, dozens of Protestants were burned alive for refusing to renounce their faith. She earned the nickname 'Bloody Mary' for a reason. And all of this, on the very same spot where, since the year 1174, a meat market has operated — and it's st…