Who leaves the flowers on Anne’s grave every May 19th and when did this start? Obviously a huge Anne Boleyn fan!! Rich Jones
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I often wonder this too! According to one Yeoman Warder it has been happening for over 25 years and no-one seems to know when it actually started, perhaps it's longer than living memory. Perhaps a Carey/Boleyn descendant? Could be a tradition passed down through a family.
8 Responses to “Who leaves the flowers on Anne’s grave every May 19th and when did this start? Obviously a huge Anne Boleyn fan!! Rich Jones”
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might it be a royal tradition seeing as she was queen when she was killed?
thats just what i think anyway.
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Could be but then Catherine Howard doesn’t get any roses delivered and she was queen – a mystery!
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Shades of Rudy Valentino! It’s nice that such care continues.
b
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but wasnt catheine howard stripped of her title as queen? therefore not really a queen at her death??
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Red roses are associated with many romantic traditions, but few so intriguing as one described in the Sunday Telegraph. Apparently for over 150 years, descendants of Anne Boleyn have been secretly sending a bunch of red roses to be laid on her tomb in the chapel of the Tower of London. The second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn was beheaded at the Tower in 1536. The roses arrive at the Tower each year on 19th May, the anniversary of her death.
After three years research Major General Chris Tyler, a former director-general of the Tower who became fascinated by the tradition, has tracked down a family of descendants who live in Kent. After polite questioning during a visit to the Tower they admitted that they had been responsible for the flowers, and their relatives before them.
Each year the bunch of roses appeared on Anne Boleyn’s marble tomb, but no one knew how they got there as no member of the public is allowed into the chapel without being attended by one of the Tower’s famous Beefeaters.
A key piece of assistance came when General Tyler discovered that Longmans, the florist shop closest to the Tower, had been receiving since the mid-1850s, an annual order for red roses to go to Queen Anne Boleyn, The Tower of London, under instructions to maintain strict anonymity. But six years ago the order was moved to a branch of Longmans in the Kent village close to where the descendants live.
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I think it’s a wonderful family tradition and a lovely way to honour Anne, long may it continue.
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SO CAN ANY BUDDING HISTORIANS OU THERE STATE WHO HER DESCENDANTS ARE ANDF/OR WHERE THEY RESIDE ?
SAW TE THEATRE VERSION ABOUT ANNE’S LIFE ON SUNDAY LAST IN BRUM – BRILLIANT !!!
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Roses are red, my love, violets are blue…
Anne is still with us, and that makes it all, allright! Smile, you lot, and stop sobbing, that’s what Anne would say.
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