Visit the Jewel Tower – A medieval treasure house that was part of the old Palace of Westminster

Craig’s review… There are only four survivors from the medieval Palace of Westminster: the Jewel Tower, Westminster Hall (which you can visit on a tour of Parliament), plus a cloister and chapel beneath St. Stephen’s Hall (both inaccessible to the likes of you and me).

Photo: Craig Cross

All four survived the fire of 1512 which levelled half the building, escaped the Great Fire of London which petered out past St. Paul’s, then Whitehall Palace burned down around them and the rest was destroyed in the big fire of 1834. Then they built the Houses of Parliament on top which took a couple of direct hits in the Blitz.

Edward III’s treasure house in the Palace of Westminster

Because of its name lots of tourists come here thinking it was home to the Crown Jewels but they’ve always been locked up safe and sound inside the Tower of London. The Jewel Tower was where Edward III kept all of his other valuables – his beautifully decorated bowls, goblets, carved cups, silver plates, feathers and gems.

He persuaded the monks of Westminster Abbey to hand over the land that butted up against the back of his privy palace (the residential part that was full of chambers and chapels for the Royal Family, away from all the rowdy Lords and lawyers in Westminster Hall), then he dug a defensive moat around it to keep out the thieves.

By the time Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 it had been demoted to a cupboard for his furniture and clothes, and later on it became a storehouse for all the Acts of Parliament made over the road.

Board of Trade Standards Department - Testing Centre

Photo: Craig Cross

After the big fire of 1834 the parliamentary archives were shifted into the newly built Houses of Parliament and the tower became a testing centre for the Board of Trade Standards Department. They were the scientists who had the job of telling you how much an ounce weighed, how long a metre was, and how many inches you could take for a mile.

One of the rooms has a few tables laid out with the scientists’ old scales and a wooden box of rods and pipettes.

Museum exhibition inside the Jewel Tower

Photo: Craig Cross

The rest of the tower houses a little exhibition at the top of some winding stone stairs (the kind of stairs that makes you realise how unfit you are) and the whole thing consists of two sparsely decorated rooms and a couple of tiny little side rooms.

All they’ve got in the first room are a couple of info boards with a timeline and a glass cabinet full of archaeology that they pulled out of the moat (a few clay pipes and busted beakers, mugs and jugs, that sort of thing). There’s a couple of pottery bottles, a rusted old Anglo-Saxon sword, and a row of stone capitals from the tops of the columns in Westminster Hall.

Photo: Craig Cross

A tiny little side room has a few straw-filled crates to give you an idea of what Edward’s treasure house might have looked like, and the other one has a couple of laminated pictures of the old parliamentary archives, including Charles I’s death warrant and the Act of Union between England and Scotland, but that’s literally it.

If you read every single word in the building then you’ll probably be finished in twenty minutes – that’s how small the exhibition is.

Worth a visit? ☆☆☆Value for money? ★☆☆Good for kids? ☆☆☆Easy to get to? ★★★

I also recommend… If you enjoy this then try Houses of Parliament (you can walk it in less than 2 mins). How about visiting another part of the original Palace of Westminster: Westminster Hall. Or perhaps you might like to see the greatest room from Whitehall Palace: Banqueting House. If you’re interested in old coinage then try the Bank of England Museum

The author Craig Cross owns city-guide.london and has spent the last decade reviewing the capital’s landmarks, attractions and hotels. His guidebook London Squire is available from Amazon. This review was updated on 28th August 2023