It was an extra-parochial area with moniker Great Tower Hill. According to Tower Hamlets Borough Council, it is for official purposes a part of St Katharine Docks. For centuries the hill hosted public executions, particularly of attainted peers and today it is notable for being the site of the Tower Hill Memorial in its Trinity Square Gardens which are adjoined by its two smaller public gardens, Wakefield and Tower Gardens. The latter are lined by a web of pavements which cut short Trinity Square, rendering it a curved park-lined street.
The set of gardens and buildings surrounding are served by Tower Gateway DLR and Tower Hill tube stations. The street Tower Hill forms an edge of the congestion charging zone between Byward Street in the west and a junction with Minories and Tower Hill Terrace in the east.
In one of the oldest parts of London, archaeological evidence shows that there was a settlement on the hill in the Bronze Age and much later a Roman village that was burnt down during the Boudica uprising. A nearby church, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, is known for fragments of Romanesque architecture dating back to AD 680; the church itself dates from 675.
Great Tower Hill was an extra-parochial area within the Tower Liberty, under the direct administrative control of the Tower of London and outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and the county of Middlesex. In 1855 the area became part of the district of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The “District of Tower” became part of the Whitechapel District, under the authority of the Whitechapel District Board of Works. This was ambiguous and The Great Tower Hill Act 1869 was required to explicitly interpret it as Old Tower Without, including within it Great Tower Hill. The Tower Liberty was abolished in 1894 and incorporated into the County of London.
public executions of male traitors and criminals were often carried out on Tower Hill. High-profile women and high-profile male traitors and criminals, on the other hand, were executed at Tower Green, who were mostly before detained in the Tower of London, inside the walls of the Tower of London. A remarkable and pretty interesting tradition in the face of the upcoming Brexit.
