Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, HM Tower of London
Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, HM Tower of London
The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula is a Grade I chapel within HM Tower of London. It is a Royal Peculiar and the Tower’s parish church; access is normally by Yeoman Warder tour.
- Location
- HM Tower of London, Greater London
- Country
- England
- County
- Greater London
- City / town
- HM Tower of London
- Address
- HM Tower of London, Greater London, EC3N 4AB
- Postcode
- EC3N 4AB
- Built
- c.1519–20; restored 1876–7 (west tower rebuilt; north-east vestry added)
- Denomination
- Royal Peculiar
- Dedication
- Peter
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Early Tudor
- Materials
- Render over ragstone with ashlar quoins and dressings; lead roof; flint west tower with Portland stone dressings
- Opening hours
- Please note that access to the Chapel of St Peter’s is only available by joining a Yeoman Warder tour. Disabled access available, but prior notice of at least 72 hours is appreciated.
- Access
- Accessible toilets in church. Accessible toilets nearby. Level access to the main areas. Non-accessible toilets in church
Overview
Historic England records a chapel of about 1519–20, restored in 1876–7 when the west tower was rebuilt and a north-east vestry added. The fabric is render over ragstone with ashlar quoins and dressings and a lead roof. The plan is chancel and nave with a north aisle, in Early Tudor style: five-bay elevations with hood-moulds over three-light Tudor-arched windows with cinquefoil-headed lights, a five-light east window, and a late-seventeenth-century wood bell cupola on a flint tower with Portland stone dressings. Inside, a four-bay north arcade has quatrefoil-section piers and moulded Tudor-arched openings under flat tie-beam roofs.
Historic Royal Palaces and the Chapels Royal record earlier churches on or near the site from the Saxon period, rebuilt under Henry III and again by Edward I in 1286, then lost to fire in 1512. The present chapel was finished in 1520 under Sir Richard Cholmondeley. It is the burial place of Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More and others executed at the Tower. The listing notes the Cholmondeley tomb chest, the Holland (Duke of Exeter) monument transferred from St Katharine’s, and a late-nineteenth-century memorial to those executed on Tower Green.