Thank you so much to Edith and Lucy the dog for their excellent question regarding Anne Boleyn’s imprisonment in the Tower of London in May 1536.
In series like The Tudors, Anne Boleyn is shown being treated like a queen even though she’s a prisoner, and she’s shown being attended by ladies-in-waiting? But is this true? That’s what Edith and Lucy want to know.
In this video, I talk about where in the Tower Anne Boleyn was imprisoned and who attended her during that time. I also consider whether Anne was forced to watch the executions of the men, and who accompanied her to the scaffold on 19th May 1536.
By the way, the queen’s apartments of the royal palace at the Tower of London were situated between the Lanthorn Tower and the Wardrobe Tower, on the South Lawn behind the White Tower.
Here is a plan of what the Tower of London was like c.1597 (click on image to enlarge):-
The White Tower is the black squarish blob in the middle and below that you can see an x below it which marks the site of the Great Hall and if you follow that around to the right you can see 2 which marks the Palace Building and then a 4 which marks the Queen’s Lodgings.
In the plan below, you can see the Queen’s Lodgings marked with a “g” (click on image to enlarge):-
If you then compare these plans with the present day Tower plan found at https://www.hrp.org.uk/media/1587/tower-map-2018.pdf, you can see that the Queen’s Lodgings would have stood on the present day lawned area between the White Tower (2) and Lanthorn Tower (3).
Here is a video on the Royal Palace that Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII would have known:-
