Scheduled Monument and Listed Building: The medieval town wall, ditch and gates of Ludlow, which were built between 1233 and c1304, thus postdating the laying out of the planned medieval town itself (and indeed excluding parts of it). The remains are fragmentary, but the course of the defences remains visible.
In January 1989 An evaluation trench was dug at the rear of 25, Bull Ring, Ludlow. [ESA1599] This was in advance of the construction of an extension to the Feathers Hotel, where the east wall of a recently demolished C19 building had been built on the footings of the town wall. The undisturbed natural ground was not encountered within the trench. The only layers of archaeological importance observed were the footings of the town wall and possibly a layer of red clay. <4>
Murage grants for the upkeep of walls were documented in 1294 and 1309. The town ditch was in existence in 1691 when there was still a drawbridge over it at Broad Gate. However, there was a cottage in the ditch. The town defences follow the same alignments as property boundaries and clearly post-date the layout of the properties. The town defences were owned by the Corporation from 1461 and by the 16th century the ditch was leased for limepits, gardens and small houses <43>
The stretch of town wall north from Old Gate [PRN 01764] was still standing in 1822. <44>
The town defences were built over some years in the later 13th century and were completed by c 1290. There were eight gates, with one on each of the major and minor roads into the town: Broad Gate (PRN 11006); Mill Gate (PRN 01769); Dinham Gate (PRN 01763); Linney Gate (PRN 01767); Corve Gate (PRN 01766); Galdeford Gate (PRN 01765) and Old Gate (PRN 01764). There was a further minor gate by the castle (PRN 01768). As well as gates, there were small towers of which two survive (PRN 01795 and PRN 11262); another was recorded in the 19th century (PRN 03752). <46>
Construction of the town defences began in 1233 and continued until 1304. The wall was fronted by a ditch, now largely infilled. The ditch is now marked by curving property boundaries. <47>
The town was granted a licence to build defences in 1233. They were not completed on the south side of the town until at least the 1290s. The defences were built to respect the topography of the hilltop, so parts of the town already in existence were excluded and became extramural suburbs (eg Old Street, Corve Street). <48>
The height and thickness of Ludlow's town walls was not comparable to other fortified towns such as Shrewsbury. They appear to have acted more as features controlling access into the town than real defensive structures. The construction is usually of rubble sandstone rather than ashlar as is generally seen elsewhere. A recording exercise on the rear boundary wall of the old Museum Stores in Old Street established that the lower part of the wall could be part of the medieval town wall, though it could also be a post medieval rebuild on the same line. <49>
In 1997 English Heritage sent the SMR a copy of a Field Monument Warden's 1996 report on a 2 day survey of the separate sections of the Town Wall, aimed at updating ownership and condition information. <50>
The 1993 List split the circuit into ten sections:
A. (1202825)From south end of Castle Walk House to Linney Gate.[PRN 01767]
B. (1291658) From site of Linney Gate, eastwards [to site of Corve Gate PRN 01766]
C. (1291646) From site of Corve Gate, eastwards [to site of Galdeford Gate PRN 01765]
D. (1282006) From site of Galdeford Gate, southwards.
E. (1282007) From Walters Clothing Factory, southwards [to rear of 75 Old Street, towards Old Gate PRN 01764]
F. (1219038) From Old Gate House, westwards. [to Broad Gate PRN 11006]
G. (1202827) From site of Mill Street Gate, eastwards [to Broad Gate PRN 11006]
H. (1219077) From site of Mill Street Gate, westwards [to Bastion at W end PRN 01795]
I. (1291656) From site of Dinham Gate, south-eastwards [ towards Bastion PRN 01795]
J. (1202826) From site of Dinham Gate, northwards [to base of Castle]. <51>
Observations were made prior to repair works on the western section of the town wall, adjacent to Camp Lane, thought to be part of the original street pattern of the 12th century. [This is part of the section SE of Dinham Gate]
The wall was constructed of siltstone and sandstone and was laid to rough courses, being faced with rubble infill. Bonding material used was either friable light pinkish-orange sand with occasional snail shell inclusions and moderate amounts of sandstone gravel or rough darkish grey lime ash mortar bonding with occasional snail shell inclusions. Material recovered from the banks abutting the wall included abundant modern debris, animal bone fragments, clear pane glass, c18th/19th/early 20th century ceramics and a single sherd of 13th/14th century pottery (Wall area 2). The 13th/14th century pottery may offer some slight dating evidence as the deposit also included tumbled material from the collapsed wall, but may equally be residual or entirely out of context. All three wall areas show evidence of restoration and repair, probably indicative of continuous maintenance throughout the 13th-15th centuries and possibly of repairs carried out during the 1640s in connection with the civil war. Evidence of 19th century repairs are also evident. The repairs suggest care was taken to select refurbishment materials conforming where possible to those used within the original construction. <52>
2010 watching brief investigating the structural stability of the town walls adjacent to Castle Street car park. Three test trenches excavated to investigate the structural stability of the town defences were archaeologically monitored and revealed possible rampart material (7, 13, & 18) in all three trenches. Evidence for large-scale groundworks was also seen in the southern end of all three trenches, and is likely to represent site clearance for the creation of the car park. The only possible natural deposits (19 & 20) were identified at the bottom of trench C to the east. No other significant archaeological features or deposits were seen during the course of these investigations. <54>
In 2007 a Management Plan was produced for the Ludlow Town Walls. It included the results of a survey, by individual property, of the internal and external faces of the Town wall, divided into the following 8 sections:
1. Castle to Linney Gate: This section of wall is generally intact and standing to a height of 5-6m, built off outcropping rock, and with ground level inside the wall occurring at or close to parapet level.
2. Linney Gate to Corve Gate: This section comprises a continuation of the 5-6m high stone wall, with the high ground level of St Laurence’s church lawns located within the wall. A number of later buildings are built against the external face of the wall. The wall is intact as far as The Compasses public house, though sections of the wall may exist within The Compasses.
3.Corve Gate to Galdeford or Tower Gate: This is a partially surviving section of 2-4m high stone wall between Corve Street and the rear of the Feathers Hotel. Other isolated fragments, or later replacements on the same line, may exist in Attorney’s Walk, and beneath a supermarket.
4. Tower Gate to Old Gate: This forms a partially surviving section of 4m high stone wall at the northern end, diminishing to 2m high at the southern end of the section. Ground level inside the wall generally follows parapet level. The central section of the wall, at the site of the former Chapel Works, is missing. There is also a missing section between 75 and 83 Broad Street, up to the Old Gate.
5. Old Gate to Broad Gate: This section generally comprises an intact 5-6m high stone wall from the former Old Gate to the surviving Board Street Gate gatehouse, built off outcropping rock. The internal ground level generally follows parapet level.
6. Broad Gate to Mill Gate: This section comprises a generally intact 5-6m high stone wall from Broad Gate to the former Mill Gate, built off outcropping rock. Internal ground level generally follows the parapet level. A return wall along Mill Street is also significant.
7. Mill Gate to Dinham Gate: This section comprises a fragmentary stone wall, 3-4m high at the Mill Gate end diminishing to 2-3m high at the Dinham end, and with a large middle section missing. Internal ground level generally follows parapet level where the wall survives.
8. Dinham Gate to Castle: This section comprises a 4-5m high stone wall on high outcropping rock, climbing up towards the south west corner of the castle. The internal ground level generally follows parapet level. <56>
As part of an evaluation of a site at Galdeford ahead of proposed residential development in 1998, a trench was excavated at SO 5136 7457 to the E of the line of the town walls, to investigate the nature of the town ditch. A slot was excavated across the ditch, and a section was drawn. The ditch was recorded as approximately 7m wide and was cut to a depth of 2.5m below the natural on its W edge. The basal fills of the ditch were sampled by machine only. The ditch had been much disturbed by the insertion of soakaways and drains and finally a sewer. A surface had been laid, presumably as a pathway running along inside the ditch. Below this level, pottery and glass consistently dating to the 18th century was recovered. ->
-> A mortar and stone deposit was recorded which may represent the demolition of part of the town defences with the material being derived from the wall. If that is the case, the pottery would put the demolition of this part of the wall into the 18th century. <57>
A heritage statement was prepared in 2012 for 116-119 Lower Galdeford, which lies immediately adjacent to the eastern defences. Part of the wall is scheduled where it borders the site, and survives as an extant masonry wall. The wall was built in stages during the 13th century but it is not clear, either historically or archaeologically, whether it replaced an earlier timber palisade or was built as a completely new element of the townscape. ->
-> The wall is built of thinly coursed locally quarried siltstone and whilst being fairly tall is not particularly substantial in terms of its width. It was, presumably, wide enough for a walk behind an embattled parapet but evidence of these is now limited. The wall would have been fronted by a broad and deep ditch, probably itself the remodelling of an earlier ditch in front of the rampart and timber palisade of an earlier defensive line. The ditch could have been at least 10-15m wide and several metres deep, depending on the sub- surface geology, with a shallower slope on the outer, or east, side. Much of the area to the rear of Nos.118 and 119 Lower Galdeford was probably formerly part of the ditch, infilled sometime in the post-medieval period after the defences had become effectively redundant. <58>
An archaeological watching brief was undertaken on the site of 116-119 Lower Galdeford, in 2014-2015, following the preparation of the heritage statement (<58>). Archaeological monitoring was undertaken during the excavation of a new drain adjacent to the surviving section of town wall. This revealed a considerable depth of made up ground which lay above >1m of loose greyish silty flaggy stone in greyish gravelly soil. It is assumed that this material represents a deliberate fill of the ditch that would have once adjoined the east side of the wall. At the northern end of the trench red clay was exposed to a thickness of approximately 100mm for a maximum 600mm length, at the base of the trench at 1.4m bpgl. Within the limits of the excavation, it was not possible determine if the red clay represented the base of a ditch or a natural layer. <59>
The section of the town wall adjacent to Castle Square Car Park was photographed during aerial survey in 2009. <60>
A 10m section of the town wall on Upper Linney collapsed in February 2013; photographed during aerial survey in 2014. <61>
An archaeological watching brief was undertaken during service trenching along the length of Tower Street in January 2016, which crossed the line of the defences, believed to have been started in 1233, although they could have taken many years to complete. No archaeological finds, features or deposits were encountered. The trench was excavated to a relatively shallow depth of 0.5m and it was considered possible that archaeological deposits survive below this depth. <62>
A desk-based assessment was undertaken in 2016 for a site at No. 9 Tower Street. This identified that the sections of the Town Wall in the immediate vicinity of the site had been demolished, although the projected line of the wall would appear to extend along the W edge of the site boundary. Documentary evidence records that the Town Wall was defended by an outer ditch, which has been recorded to be c.7m wide and 2.5m deep (see <57>). However, the potential width of the ditch has been estimated in other locations to be up to 11m. The importance of the ditch to the town defences is demonstrated by the fact that many of the town’s medieval Bailiff’s accounts include entries for men hired to clean the fossatum, or ditch. If the ditch extended to the site of the proposed development, it is likely that similar features will be encountered, as the Town Wall runs across the W of the site and the ditch was located to the E of the Wall. <63>
A desk-based assessment was prepared for a section of Ludlow Town Hall to the rear of St Lawrence’s churchyard, including the study of archaeological and historical evidence and of the fabric of this section of wall, which had collapsed in 2013. This has shown that the town wall, as represented by the retaining wall along the northern edge of the churchyard, has seen significant levels of repair and alteration since construction, presumably in the 13th century. Exposed bedrock adjacent to St Leonard’s House indicates that the natural topography was exploited in this area when the wall was constructed; it is not known whether there would also have been a defensive ditch flanking the wall at this point. The wall is constructed from roughly coursed rubblestone, consistent with lengths of surviving wall elsewhere. Little diagnostic evidence survives to date the extant fabric of the wall, but historical sources indicate repairs in the 16th and 17th century, and the surviving fabric appears to represent various phases of repair and, in some areas, rebuilding. Throughout the 19th century, and probably during earlier centuries, a series of outbuildings were constructed against the northern elevation of the retaining wall, and these relatively insubstantial structures are likely to have been altered and amended regularly. A length of wall to the immediate rear of The Compasses may represent a post-medieval building that was constructed against the town wall. Within the churchyard, evidence indicates that at least the upper parts of the wall would originally have been free-standing and possibly crenelated. GPR survey [<64a>] has indicated that an earlier ground surface, identified at a depth of 4m below ground level in the northeast corner of the churchyard, would have sloped downwards from south to north towards the wall, and also downwards to the east. <64>
A watching brief was undertaken in 2022 on boreholes to locate the town ditch, on the site of the former supermarket on Upper Galeford (centred SO 5132 7476). These boreholes failed to locate deposits of archaeological origin. The town ditch is known to be a substantial feature over 2m deep and 7m wide - no such feature was recorded. It was suggested that the town ditch would run to the W of the site under investigation. <65>
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