A large Elizabeth garden is indicated in the Haiward and Gascoyne Survey of 1597, and entry from the Bloody Tower as well as the Lieutenant’s Lodging are both shown. Perhaps that’s why, when Lucy St.John was in residence at the Lodging, she gave Sir Walter Raleigh access to the hen house in her garden for his alchemy. He also kept a still house there, and according to a contemporary account, the door of his lodging in the Bloody Tower was “always open all day to the garden.” I like to think that the walled garden at Lydiard Park may have inspired Lucy to create her own apothecary garden within the Tower.
