The Saturday briefing

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

- by CAROLINE FORD

Is there anything you're yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...

Q As a boy on a school trip to the Tower Of London, we were told that a polar bear had once been kept there and that it was allowed to swim in the Thames. Is this true and have other animals been kept in the Tower?

Frank Alcott, Doncaster, Yorks

A Built in the 1700s by William the Conqueror, the Tower of London has been home to the Royal Mint and Crown Jewels, a prison and for 600 years, a "zoo".

Britain's first royal menagerie was established by King Henry I in 1110 at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, but this was relocated to the Tower by King John in around 1200. At first it was a place to store exotic wild animals - many of which had never been seen in the UK - that had been gifted to the monarch as status symbols from heads of state.

It was John's son, Henry Ill, in 1235 who officially established the royal menagerie, after receiving three lions from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.

These were joined by a "white bear" (presumably a polar bear) in 1252 as a gift from the King of Norway. The bear was sometimes allowed to swim and fish in the Thames, tethered by a long chain.