This pleasant little park was the site of the Tower Hill scaffold, where a confirmed 125 people met their fate, including St Thomas More, St John Fisher and Thomas Cromwell. Now it’s a much more peaceful place, ringed by important buildings and bits of London's ancient Roman wall. Within the park is Edwin Lutyens’ Tower Hill Memorial (1928), dedicated to the almost 24,000 merchant sailors who died in both world wars and have no known grave.
To the north is Trinity House, topped with a ship's weathervane and housing the General Lighthouse Authority for England and Wales. To the west is the massive former Port of London Authority building (1922), lorded over by Father Thames – it's now a Four Seasons hotel. On a grassy area next to the main exit of Tower Hill tube station there’s a stretch of the medieval wall built on Roman foundations, with a modern statue of Emperor Trajan (r AD 98–117) standing in front of it. You can see more of the 2nd-century Roman wall around the corner from the tube station, in the courtyard of the Grange City Hotel.