Welcome to Tales of the Tower. Using this system you will be able to watch and listen to some of the many stories about the Archbishops Palace, told by those who lived and worked here.
There are ten stories. Click on the title to see the story.
- The Pilgrim’s Tale
- The Gatekeeper’s Tale
- Warham Muses
- The Architect’s Tale
- The Steward’s Tale
- The Stone Mason’s Tale
- Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer
- The Story of the Flat-pack Palace
- The Nightingale’s Tale
- The Trust’s Vision
When you have finished viewing the stories, we invite you to take a short, anonymous survey about your experience. Click here for the survey
Acknowledgements
The Trust thanks the players of the National Lottery without whom this project would not have been possible.
We also thank those who contributed the voice-overs: Lady Colgrain, Katherine Cole, John Bailey, Rod Shelton, Roger House, Steve Mark O Fenton, Ed Bailey and Steve Williams.
The majority of the mages used in the vignettes are either © Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust or have been generated by Imagen 3, part of Google Gemini AI.
The image of Thomas Beckett in the Pilgrim’s Tale is CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, with Acknowledgement to Fr Lawrence OP
The image of King Henry on horseback in the Gatekeeper’s Tale is licenced under creative commons CC BY-NC 4.0 with acknowledgement to https://curiouscarvings.org/
The image of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester in the Gatekeeper’s Tale is © The Trustees of the British Museum used here under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
The image of the Darent Valley in The Nightingale’s Tale is reproduced with thanks to the DVLPS/Kent Downs National Landscape.
A number of images are © The National Portrait Gallery, London and are licenced under creative commons CC BY-NC-ND
• Katherine of Aragon NPG 163 by Unknown artist, in the Gatekeeper’s Tale, The Steward’s Tale and Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer
• King Henry VIII NPG 4690 by Unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, in the Gatekeeper’s Tale, Warham Muses and Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer, The Story of the Flat Pack Palace and The Steward’s Tale.
• William Warham NPG 2094 after Hans Holbein the Younger, in Warham Muses
• Thomas Cranmer NPG 535 by Gerlach Flicke in Warham Muses and Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer
• Anne Boleyn NPG 668 by Unknown English artist, in Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer
Keys in the Steward’s Tale: Jangling Flat Keys 1.wav by F.M.Audio — https://freesound.org/s/561737/ — License: Attribution 4.0.
Horses in the Gatekeeper’s Tale: sfx-horse-steps-1.wav by davilca — https://freesound.org/s/159498/ — License: Creative Commons 0