long ago the Edwardian wall of Berwick-on-Tweed was threatened with demolition at the hands of those who ought to be its guardians—the Corporation of the town. An official from the Office of Works, when he saw the begrimed, neglected appearance of the two fragments of this wall near the Bell Tower, with a stagnant pool in the fosse, bestrewed with broken pitchers and rubbish, reported that the Elizabethan walls of the town which were under the direction of the War Department were in excellent condition, whereas the Edwardian masonry was utterly neglected. And why was this relic of the town's former greatness to be pulled down? Simply to clear the site for the erection of modern dwelling-houses. A very strong protest was made against this act of municipal barbarism by learned societies, the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and others, and we hope that the hand of the destroyer has been stayed.
Most of the principal towns in England were protected by walls, and the citizens regarded it as a duty to build them and keep them in repair. When we look at some of these fortifications, their strength, their height, their thickness, we are struck by the fact that they were very great achievements, and that they must have been raised with immense labour and gigantic cost. In turbulent and warlike times they were absolutely necessary. Look at some of these triumphs of medieval engineering skill, so strong, so massive, able to defy the attacks of lance and arrow, ram or catapult, and to withstand ages of neglect and the storms of a tempestuous clime. Towers and bastions stood at intervals against the wall at convenient distances, in order that bowmen stationed in them could shoot down any who attempted to scale the wall with ladders anywhere within the distance between the towers. All along the wall there was a protected pathway for the defenders to stand, and machicolations through which boiling oil or lead, or heated sand could be poured on the heads of the attacking force. The gateways were carefully constructed, flanked by defending towers with a portcullis, and a guard-room overhead with holes in the vaulted roof of the gateway for pouring down inconvenient substances upon the heads of the besiegers. There were several gates, the usual number being four; but Coventry had twelve, Canterbury six, and Newcastle-on-Tyne seven, besides posterns.
Berwick-upon-Tweed, York, Chester, and Conway have maintained their walls in good condition. Berwick has three out of its four gates still standing. They are called Scotchgate, Shoregate, and Cowgate, and in the last two still remain the original massive wooden gates with their bolts and hinges. The remaining fourth gate, named Bridgate, has vanished. We have alluded to the neglect of the Edwardian wall and its threatened destruction. Conway has a wall a mile and a quarter in length, with twenty-one semicircular towers along its course and three great gateways besides posterns. Edward I built this wall in order to subjugate the Welsh, and also the walls round Carnarvon, some of which survive, and Beaumaris. The name of his master-mason has been preserved, one Henry le Elreton. The muniments of the Corporation of Alnwick prove that often great difficulties arose in the matter of wall-building. Its closeness to the Scottish border rendered a wall necessary. The town was frequently attacked and burnt. The inhabitants obtained a licence to build a wall in 1433, but they did not at once proceed with the work. In 1448 the Scots came and pillaged the town, and the poor burgesses were so robbed and despoiled that they could not afford to proceed with the wall and petitioned the King for aid. Then Letters Patent were issued for a collection to be made for the object, and at last, forty years after the licence was granted, Alnwick got its wall, and a very good wall it was—a mile in circumference, twenty feet in height and six in thickness; "it had four gateways—Bondgate, Clayport, Pottergate, and Narrowgate. Only the first-named of these is standing. It is three stories in height. Over the central archway is a panel on which was carved the Brabant lion, now almost obliterated. On either side is a semi-octagonal tower. The masonry is composed of huge blocks to which time and weather have given dusky tints. On the front facing the expected foes the openings are but little more than arrow-slits; on that within, facing the town, are well-proportioned mullioned and transomed windows. The great ribbed archway is grooved for a portcullis, now removed, and a low doorway on either side gives entrance to the chambers in the towers. Pottergate was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and crowns a steep street; only four corner-stones marked T indicate the site of Clayport. No trace of Narrowgate remains."4
As the destruction of many of our castles is due to the action of Cromwell and the Parliament, who caused them to be "slighted" partly out of revenge upon the loyal owners who had defended them, so several of our town-walls were thrown down by order of Charles II at the Restoration on account of the active assistance which the townspeople had given to the rebels. The heads of rebels were often placed on gateways. London Bridge, Lincoln, Newcastle, York, Berwick, Canterbury, Temple Bar, and other gates have often been adorned with these gruesome relics of barbarous punishments.
How were these strong walls ever taken in the days before gunpowder was extensively used or cannon discharged their devastating shells? Imagine you are present at a siege. You would see the attacking force advancing a huge wooden tower, covered with hides and placed on wheels, towards the walls. Inside this tower were ladders, and when the "sow" had been pushed towards the wall the soldiers rushed up these ladders and were able to fight on a level with the garrison. Perhaps they were repulsed, and then a shed-like structure would be advanced towards the wall, so as to enable the men to get close enough to dig a hole beneath the walls in order to bring them down. The besieged would not be inactive, but would cast heavy stones on the roof of the shed. Molten lead and burning flax were favourite means of defence to alarm and frighten away the enemy, who retaliated by casting heavy stones by means of a catapult into the town.
Amongst the fragments of walls still standing, those at Newcastle are very massive, sooty, and impressive. Southampton has some grand walls left and a gateway, which show how strongly the town was fortified. The old Cinque Port, Sandwich, formerly a great and important town, lately decayed, but somewhat renovated by golf, has two gates left, and Rochester and Canterbury have some fragments of their walls standing. The repair of the walls of towns was sometimes undertaken by guilds. Generous benefactors, like Sir Richard Whittington, frequently contributed to the cost, and sometimes a tax called murage was levied for the purpose which was collected by officers named muragers.
The city of York has lost many of its treasures, and the City Fathers seem to find it difficult to keep their hands off such relics of antiquity as are left to them. There are few cities in England more deeply marked with the impress of the storied past than York—the long and moving story of its gates and walls, of the historical associations of the city through century after century of English history. About eighty years ago the Corporation destroyed the picturesque old barbicans of the Bootham, Micklegate, and Monk Bars, and only one, Walmgate, was suffered to retain this interesting feature. It is a wonder they spared those curious stone half-length figures of men, sculptured in a menacing attitude in the act of hurling large stones downwards, which vaunt themselves on the summit of Monk Bar—probably intended to deceive invaders—or that interesting stone platform only twenty-two inches wide, which was the only foothold available for the martial burghers who guarded the city wall at Tower Place. A year or two ago the City Fathers decided, in order to provide work for the unemployed, to interfere with the city moats by laying them out as flower-beds and by planting shrubs and making playgrounds of the banks. The protest of the Yorks Archæological Society, we believe, stayed their hands.
The same story can be told of far too many towns and cities. A few years ago several old houses were demolished in the High Street of the city of Rochester to make room for electric tramways. Among these was the old White Hart Inn, built in 1396, the sign being a badge of Richard II, where Samuel Pepys stayed. He found that "the beds were corded, and we had no sheets to our beds, only linen to our mouths" (a narrow strip of linen to prevent the contact of the blanket with the face). With regard to the disappearance of old inns, we must wait until we arrive at another chapter.
We
