The Stone Gate of Old London Bridge displayed the severed heads of executed traitors on iron pikes for approximately 355 years. Whose head was the first?
Wallace's head went up in 1305 and established the precedent. Over the next three and a half centuries the gate displayed heads of Despenser (1326), Wat Tyler (1381), Jack Cade (1450), Thomas More and John Fisher (1535), Thomas Cromwell (1540), and ultimately Oliver Cromwell himself (1661 — his head remained displayed for 24 years before a storm blew it down in 1684). The medieval head-display practice ended after the Restoration. The Stone Gate was demolished in 1760.
Read the full story →The Stone Gate at the southern end of Old London Bridge displayed the severed heads of executed traitors on iron-tipped pikes from approximately 1305 to 1660. William Wallace's head went up first. By the 1660 closure the gate had displayed the heads of several hundred traitors, regicides, and political enemies of the Crown.
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