The legend of the ravens at the Tower
Following the death of the oldest corvid at the Tower of London, Joe Shute looks at the strange power they wield
The raven graveyard is a small patch of earth in the south moat of the Tower of London, reserved for the bones of its famous sentinels. Now a new name is to be added to the memorial: Munin, the eldest of the resident ravens that watch over the Tower, has died at the age of 22.
A short statement released by Historic Royal Palaces has confirmed the longest-serving of its ravens “sadly passed away [on Friday] after a brief age-related illness”. Otherwise the Tower and its Yeoman Warders are maintaining a cautious silence. For as the legend goes, should the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the kingdom will fall.
The Tower of London ravens are the most famous and scrutinised of their species in the world. So much so that there have been occasions in the past when the announcement of a death of a raven has been delayed, for fear of exciting rumours that the end of the monarchy is nigh. Munin’s demise comes at a time when a Royal baby and wedding are around the corner – so perhaps even the greatest naysayers can be reassured.
Britain’s relationship with its ravens – the largest member of the corvid family, which also includes rooks, jackdaws and crows – stretches back thousands of years. From the Romans to the Celts to the Vikings to William the Conqueror’s men who stormed ashore these islands in 1066 wielding raven banners. From our oldest written texts to Shakespeare (who mentioned ravens more than 50 times in his works, exceeding any other species of animal) to Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens and more recently Tolkien and Game of Thrones, the raven has played a central role in every culture that makes up our modern identity.
“The connection with ravens goes back as far as civilisation itself,” the current Ravenmaster at the tower of London, Chris Skaife, told me when we met last year as part of research for my recent book, in which I followed the king of corvids around the country. “In every part of our culture there is a raven in the background.”
Skaife, who is in his early 50s, has been the Ravenmaster since 2011. Like all the Yeoman Warders at the Tower, he has served the required minimum 22 years in the military (in his case the Queen’s Regiment later the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment). The married father-of-one lives in an apartment on the Tower grounds and devotes every day to caring for the birds.
Until Munin’s death he kept seven ravens, all the aviary has room for: six to fulfil the requirement of the legend and one as backup. Now Erin, Rocky, Grip, Harris, Jubilee and Merlina hold the fort, although a replacement for Munin is said to be imminent.
Compared to their cousins in the wild, the Tower ravens lead a charmed life, gorging some 6oz of raw meat daily, plus biscuits soaked in blood and whatever sweets they can pilfer off passing tourists. Traditionally, Tower ravens would have their wings clipped to stop them flying away, although a few still managed to escape. One named Grog, who made a dash for it in 1981, was last spotted outside an East End pub called the Rose and Punchbowl. Nowadays Skaife only trims a few feathers from their wings to keep them as wild and agile as possible and over two years of experimenting says none have escaped.
Munin, who could be identified by the green band around her ankle, was previously wild. She was named after a raven belonging to the Norse god Odin; Hugin and Munin (meaning thought and memory) would circumnavigate the earth and return to whisper confidences into their master’s ear. She arrived at the Tower in 1995 after being caught on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Others in the current crop come from breeders. While previously chicks were reared at the Tower (before being sent elsewhere) currently no breeding pairs reside there.
Skaife adores his birds but admits he always had a complicated relationship with Munin. “I must have done something to her as a young assistant – I don’t know what – and she fell out with me,” he recalled. “If you get the trust of a raven it will trust you for life. A raven can also hate you for life.”
Recent studies have shown ravens to be the cleverest of all birds, with a staggering 2.1billion neurons packed into their forebrain (the avian equivalent of the cerebral cortex). Not only can they solve complex puzzles and establish social hierarchies but they are also talented mimics and can replicate human speech.
This intelligence was recognised by our Viking and Celt ancestors who believed the birds possessed the power of foresight and could predict the outcome of battles and the end of civilisations. The Tower of London ravens are far from the first to bear the weight of history on their giant wings, which can span 5ft at full stretch.
But contrary to the widely-held belief that the birds were installed by King Charles II, recent studies have proven that the ravens were in fact added to the Tower in the late Victorian era, to provide an air of Gothic grandeur and attract visitors to the site where 10 noble prisoners, including three queens of England, were executed during the bloody century of Tudor rule. Dr Geoffrey Parnell, an official Tower of London historian and member of the Royal Armouries staff, scoured the records for 1,000 years, and could trace the ravens back no further than the late 19th century.
It is believed the ravens were introduced by a family firm of exotic animal importers called Philip Castang, whose owner wrote a letter to Country
Life magazine in 1955, confessing he had “the order for the first Tower Ravens” hanging on his office wall.
The US author and academic Dr Boria Sax, whose book, City of Ravens, unpicks the myth surrounding the Tower’s residents, claims the idea the fate of the nation depended on the birds only began to stick during the Second World War, when they became mascots for a bombed-out London during the Blitz.
“The ravens were bought in for entertainment,” he says. “The reason why they have persisted and become such a focus for so many people lies much deeper. They have much to do with the connection between humans and the natural world. It is really remarkable that people should identify that deeply with another species. It relates to the way the British see themselves.”
Despite this close connection, Britain has long endured a complex relationship with its ravens. The birds – omnivores happy to eat rotting flesh – were once a common sight in our towns and cities and served a vital purpose as primitive dustbin crews cleaning up the streets. Indeed, King Henry VIII issued a Royal decree protecting the raven from being killed.
However, over subsequent centuries and with improved sanitation and a growing reliance on agriculture, ravens were recategorised as vermin and persecuted. By the late Victorian era, when the Tower of London birds were installed, wild ravens had been wiped out of many counties altogether, including London, where the last-known pair built a nest on the Seven Sisters Road in the far north of the city in 1845.
Since 1981, following the introduction of legislation preventing the unlicensed killing of ravens along with other wild birds, the population has exploded. There has been a 45per cent increase in the number of wild ravens in Britain since 1995 and a 121per cent increase in England over the same period. There are now well in excess of 12,000 breeding pairs around the country.
As part of the research for my book I tried to find the closest breeding wild pair to the Tower of London ravens and eventually discovered two nesting in a pylon at Swanscombe Marshes, only a few miles away down the Thames Estuary.
I asked the Ravenmaster when he thought the birds might once more be flying over the Tower of London and like many lovers of the king of the corvids he grinned at the prospect.
Despite the death of Munin, the ravens are returning; and with them the fate of the nation seems secure in their claws.