The Tower of London Ravens: The Legend, the Superstition, and the Man Whose Job Is to Keep Them

There is a man whose entire job, every single day, is to make sure six ravens do not leave the Tower of London. He wakes up at first light and lets them out of their enclosures. Next, he cleans up after them and feeds them raw meat and blood-soaked biscuits. Throughout the day, he spends his time keeping tabs on where they are. At night, he puts them to bed.

If they leave, according to legend, the kingdom falls. This is a real job. There are currently seven ravens at the Tower, six by royal decree and one spare, just in case. The role is called the Ravenmaster. It is one of the stranger positions in British institutional life, which is saying something.

The Legend, and Why It Might Be Made Up

The story most people know goes like this. King Charles II, reigning in the 1660s, was warned by his royal astronomer John Flamsteed that ravens were interfering with his observations from the White Tower. Charles wanted them gone. Someone then warned the king that if the ravens ever left, the Tower would crumble and the kingdom would fall. Charles, a famously superstitious monarch, opted to move the Observatory to Greenwich instead. He decided to keep the birds.

The problem is that the former Ravenmaster Chris Skaife, who spent years digging through the archives, found no evidence that any of this actually happened. The first documented mention of ravens at the Tower appears not in the 1600s but during the Victorian era, when gothic revival was fashionable. Incidentally, Charles Dickens kept a pet raven. A more credible theory holds that the legend emerged during the Blitz in World War II, when German bombing was destroying London and people needed something to believe in. As long as ravens still lived at the Tower, the thinking went, Britain could not fall.

The Ravenmaster role itself is surprisingly new. The first officially titled Ravenmaster was Jack Wilmington, who joined the Yeoman Warders in 1968. Only six people have ever held the position.

What the Job Actually Looks Like

To become a Yeoman Warder, which is the prerequisite for becoming Ravenmaster, you need at least 22 years of military service and an exemplary record. You also need the rank of warrant officer or above. Then, if you want the raven job specifically, the ravens essentially interview you. When Chris Skaife was being considered, the previous Ravenmaster put him in the cage with the birds to see how they responded. They approved of him. He then spent five years training under his predecessor before taking over.

The daily routine starts before dawn. Ravens come out in order of dominance, from least to most, because the hierarchy matters to them enormously. They spend the day roaming the Tower grounds freely, stealing food from tourists, and doing whatever ravens do, which turns out to be quite a lot. Ravens are among the most intelligent birds on Earth. They problem-solve, they play, they form long-term social bonds, and they apparently have a sense of humor. Each bird at the Tower has a distinct personality.

The Ravenmaster trims their flight feathers slightly, a practice called feather management, to discourage them from flying too far. Even so, some have escaped over the years. One raven named Munin flew off to Greenwich and was returned by a member of the public after seven days. Raven George was dismissed for eating television aerials. Raven Grog was last seen outside an East End pub. Pretty iconic, I know.