The Line of Kings - Part 4

In 1882-3 the wooden horses and their riders were placed for the first time inside the White Tower. They were moved to the top floor into a large room known as the Council Chamber. This room’s shape and size were not suitable for having the figures in a single line as before. However, the objects remained a great attraction and the chamber became known as the Horse Armoury.

Once it was empty, plans were made to demolish the New Horse Armoury. This would reveal the south side of the Norman White Tower and improve the feel of the whole site as a medieval castle. The demolition of the New Horse Armoury building, which had housed the ‘Line of Kings’ from 1827 to 1882, was completed in about 1885.

The displays were improved by combining popular visitor appeal with better research into the history of arms and armour. New catalogues and guidebooks were also published. The royal armours and the carved horses remained important attractions, sometimes arranged like a procession, sometimes in a row along the walls. Some were even placed in different rooms. Occasionally it was necessary to replace one or two of the 17th-century wooden horses which had become rotten, with modern replacements.

In the 1970s and 1980s restoration work on selected 17th-century horses provided opportunities for research into their materials and construction. This showed that they differed internally and were rare survivals of carving by leading craftsmen at that time. At the same time, research by Dr Alan Borg at The National Archives identified orders and invoices of their commissioning, early visitor accounts and printed guides.

This posed several problems for the curators to deal with. One difficulty was that not all the objects that had once formed the display in the Horse Armoury could be identified in the collection. In addition, some of the most important pieces of the surviving arms and armour were now displayed at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds. It was therefore decided that ‘There is neither the space nor enough surviving horses to reconstruct the entire Line. Moreover, its composition changed during the centuries of display…The Line today [1998], therefore seeks to give a modern interpretation of this unusual exhibition’.

This re-interpretation of the ‘Line’ also faced a challenge because research into the history of arms and armour over the last 200 years had revealed that many former statements that the kings were shown wearing their actual armour were incorrect. This would have made it very confusing for visitors if Elizabethan armour was used again for the figures of medieval kings. Eventually, the mounted figures in armour were represented wearing a plain early 17th century Greenwich armour of the type known to have been used in the Line. The recreated display was seen by millions, including the late Queen Elizabeth and by the Prince of Wales, now King Charles III.