The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London

5

Bird Life

Having met the ravens, you’ll probably be wanting to get a sense of their living arrangements.

It’s perhaps easiest to visualise where we all live at the Tower if you imagine a series of concentric circles. Right in the centre is the ancient White Tower; and then there’s the Inner Ward, which is enclosed by a massive wall with thirteen towers; and then there’s the narrow Outer Ward, protected by a second wall with six towers facing the river and two bastions on the north front. And then there’s the moat, which is now a dry moat. There’s no water in the moat. Most of us Yeoman Warders live right on the edge, facing the moat, but the ravens are slap-bang in the middle of things. They’re based in a purpose-built, state-of-the-art enclosure on the south side of Tower Green, in the Inner Ward. It is the perfect spot, sheltered but warm and sunny, at the centre of the life of the Tower but just tucked away enough to give them some privacy. It’s on the site of what was once the Grand Hall, which we think was probably where Anne Boleyn was imprisoned before her execution in 1536.

Living here at the Tower, for both the birds and the Yeoman Warders, is just like living anywhere else – apart from the fact that we have arrow slits for windows, our walls are forty feet high, and we’re locked in at night.

I suppose I’m used to this sort of thing. I lived in some pretty unusual places during my time in the army. I spent plenty of nights bivouacked in the jungle, and under the stars in the fields of South Armagh. I lived in Cyprus, among the orange trees and the olive groves, and up high in the mountains in the Balkans. When you’re a soldier you get used to roughing it – you’re at home everywhere and nowhere. The Tower is as peculiar and unexpected a place to live as anywhere.

There are about 140 residents here at the Tower. As well as the Yeoman Warders and their families, the Constable of the Tower lives here, the Resident Governor and Deputy Governor, the chaplain, the doctor, the Operations Manager, the Chief Warden, the head of Visitor Services, and the manager of the Fusilier Museum. We may share our home with millions of visitors every year, but we’re a little community just like any other. We even have our own club, the Yeoman Warders Club, the Keys, which must be one of the most exclusive clubs in the world since it’s only open to Tower residents, staff and invited guests.

Some people would find living in the Tower intolerable. You’re basically living in the middle of London, in a prime tourist destination, with the public continually passing through. It’s like a fishbowl. It’s certainly not for everyone. But for me, from the moment I arrived, it felt like coming home.

When I was young we lived in the shadow of Dover Castle. Dover sits facing France across the Channel, and is the traditional entry point for visitors from abroad. Home of the famous White Cliffs, Dover is what some people like to think of as the back door into England. I like to think of it as more of a grand entrance. Who knows how much I might have been influenced as a child, looking up at the old Norman castle, floodlit at night, the trains fuming into the station, the endless comings and goings of the ferries? Growing up in Dover I became accustomed to living in a place where people were continually passing through, tourists and travellers on their way in and out of England, and maybe I even had a dim sense of living in a place of great historic importance. I may have come a long way from Dover, but in some ways I haven’t come far at all.

As I have mentioned, most of us Yeoman Warders live in the walls on the outskirts of the Tower, in the Casemates, the outer battlements. The ravens live in the very shadow of the White Tower, a building that dominates the whole of the Tower of London even today, a symbol as much as it is a building, built centuries before the ‘starchitects’ and their skyscrapers that surround us now. Decades in construction, the White Tower was begun by William the Conqueror around the late 1070s, with the object of protecting London and impressing the populace, as well as controlling the approach to the City by river. Work on the White Tower was continued by William’s son William Rufus, and was eventually finished by Henry I around 1100, at which point Henry promptly imprisoned his chief minister, Ranulf Flambard, in the newly completed building, though Flambard soon escaped, climbing down a rope having plied his guards with drink. You can certainly try that with the Yeoman Warders today. It won’t work. But it’s certainly worth a try.

When I started as Ravenmaster the ravens were kept in rather cramped night boxes, constructed in the 1980s and built into the old inner walls of the Tower. There was nothing really wrong with the night boxes. They were definitely an improvement on how the ravens were housed before then. According to an article in Country Life magazine in December 1955, some of the Tower ravens were ‘locked in the basement of a house overlooking the Green and others were confined to a cage hung on the side of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula’. Remnants of these rather primitive sleeping quarters remain today – and indeed are still in use by Merlina, who refuses to sleep with the other ravens, preferring her own company and a private night box behind an old lead-lined window on the ground floor of the Queen’s House on Tower Green, where she graciously allows the Constable of the Tower and his family to live.

The window of Merlina’s night box originally opened into the large basement of the Queen’s House, where coal was once stored, and which was first used to house ravens in 1946, when two ravens named Cora and Corax were put up there, perched on a pile of coal. We certainly don’t keep our ravens in coal bunkers any more. (One of the only times in recent history when the ravens have been kept inside at the Tower was during the avian flu virus in 2006, when tens of millions of birds worldwide died, and millions more were slaughtered to prevent the flu spreading. At that time we removed the ravens for their own safety to the upper Brick Tower, on the advice of the vets at London Zoo.)

The old night boxes just didn’t feel right to me. Ravens are wild birds who should be able to perch outside. They need to be able to fly back and forth. Like humans, they need freedom. But they also need protection. I strongly believe that if we’re going to continue to keep ravens at the Tower we have to make it as welcoming for them as possible, an environment that, if not entirely natural, is at least a place where they have room to roam in safety. So, soon after I had taken up the post of Ravenmaster, I discussed with the staff of Historic Royal Palaces – the independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and Hillsborough Castle – the possibility of constructing some sort of large enclosure that would offer the birds protection at night but that we could leave open during the day, thus enabling them to continue to roam freely outside and socialise with one another but also to enjoy some privacy. (I don’t like the word cage, by the way. I don’t even like the word aviary. They’re words that imply capture and containment. I always refer to the ravens’ night-time quarters as the enclosure.) Historic Royal Palaces was as keen as I was to make improvements to the birds’ living arrangements.

The raven enclosure at the Tower. (Courtesy of the author)

It took us about two years of research and consultation with London Zoo and Historic England and many other experts to get the design and development of the enclosure exactly right. Obtaining the planning permission alone was quite a feat. Just because we’re the Tower doesn’t mean we can make up our own rules. We had to obtain all the same planning permissions as anyone else. You can perhaps imagine the look on the face of the poor planning officer when our Planning Service Application arrived on their desk: ‘Erection of new cages and night boxes for Ravens, HM Tower of London.’ The important thing was to get the build right for the ravens, not just for the Tower or for my benefit or for the benefit of visitors; it needed to be something that the birds would want to use as a base.

The enclosure is made out of oak and a special fine wire which flexes if the birds should accidentally fly into it, to prevent them from getting injured. A tragic entry in the Tower Orders – the records of day-to-day activities at the Tower – for 18 April 1975 notes that Raven Brora was ‘Discovered entangled in wiring of the raven’s cage. Because of injuries had to be destroyed.’ It was of the utmost importance to me when designing the enclosure that this kind of terrible accident could never happen again.

One of the main requirements when we were planning the enclosure was that it had to be absolutely fox-proof. Even now, I’ll often arrive in the morning to signs that foxes have once again attempted to dig under the wire to get at the birds. They have no chance: I made sure that the wire goes straight down into the concrete and hardcore foundations. But you’d be amazed where foxes can get in. They can squeeze through the smallest gap – I’ve seen them manage to slip through gaps just a few inches wide, and once they’re in they’re in, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. We’ve lost many a raven to foxes over the years. They sneak in under the drawbridges, crawl through the gutters, and trot down secret passageways. Sometimes I think my job title should be the Fox- and Ravenmaster: I’m engaged in a continual battle just trying to keep them apart.

The enclosure has separate areas inside for each bird or pair of birds to sleep in, and big sliding doors that allow me to open up the entire space so that they can come and go as they please. Each bird has its own perches and a large night box within the enclosure. All of this might sound straightforward, but it took a long time to work out the design, based on careful observation of the birds’ behaviour.

As I said, the enclosure is really only for night-time. The birds are out flying or walking around during the day, all day, every day. Very occasionally I keep them in the enclosure if they need looking after – if they’re sick, or if they just need a break. Being on show to the public every day can be exhausting, as we Yeoman Warders know only too well. Sometimes you just need to take a little time off to be by yourself and to relax and recharge. I’m always looking for signs of stress in the birds. If I sense that they need a break for whatever reason, I keep them in. I’ve been living and working with them for such a long time now that I can tell when something’s not right, the same as you can tell if your loved ones need some extra attention. You just know. The Tower is a community – and the ravens are an essential part of that community.

6

Tower Green

Now that you have a good sense of where we all live, you’ll probably want to know about our daily routine.

The Ravenmaster’s basic duties and responsibilities can be summarised thus:

1 Clean and prepare the ravens’ water bowls for the day.

2 Clean the ravens’ enclosures and remove any food they’ve discarded from the night before.

3 Check each raven closely for any health issues.

4 Feed the ravens, administer any medicines, such as worming tablets, monitor their food intake.

5 Release the ravens from the enclosures for the day.

6 Watch the ravens’ movements as they make their way to their territories, checking and recording any wing or leg damage.

7 Monitor the ravens throughout the day, ensuring the safety of both them and the public, and dealing with any issues arising.

8 Return the ravens safely to their enclosures at night.

9 Prepare food for the morning.

10 Final check before lights out.

In theory that’s it. Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? In practice, though, it’s a little bit more complicated.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s begin at the beginning. I’m up and out onto Tower Green at the crack of dawn. My first call of the day, every day, is to check on Merlina, since she mostly likes to stay out at night, up on the rooftops. Merlina is the only raven who does this. The other ravens all return to the enclosure on the south side of Tower Green. Merlina simply refuses to do so. She treats the rooftops around Tower Green as a penthouse suite – a place to retreat to and from which to contemplate the world. Once I can see her silhouette and I can hear her call, I make sure that the whole area around Tower Green is safe and clear from debris or anything that might harm the birds. Then I proceed to fill the water bowls.