A Little Look at the Tyburn Gallows

Whilst wandering about in London this July, I was intent on finding a few geocaches around Hyde Park and fortunately stumbled across the site of a plaque relating to the Tyburn gallows. Years ago, when researching into public executions (the result of which can be read in my article about the execution of the Lightfoot brothers), I went down a rabbit hole of the Tyburn gallows, and so finally stepping upon this old site was a bit of a treat, albeit a ghastly one.

For centuries, from the medieval period to the late 1700s, people were hanged publicly at Tyburn. The first recorded killing was in 1196 (so states the trusted Wikipedia page), when William Fitz Osbert – ‘a populist leader’ who was involved in a revolt’ – was ‘dragged naked behind a horse to Tyburn, where he was hanged’. Other notable executions include leaders relating to the Pilgrimage of Grace in the 1530s.

Over time, the so-called “Tyburn Tree” was constructed to make the killing of rebels and prisoners more efficient; this was ‘a form of gallows consistently of a horizontal wooden triangle supported by three legs’, which allowed the killing of multiple people. Apparently the record for a simultaneous killing came in 1649 during the Civil War era, when 24 prisoners were executed at once.

However, none of this awful history can be felt in the modern day. In fact, I completely missed the plaque that recognises this dark past, before backtracking to view it. The plaque is located on a pedestrian round-about, within a busy area of London, and seems largely forgotten in the hubbub of the area. But, as with all things when visiting historical sites, it was still nice to connect with the past.