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Monument Types

• TOWN WALL (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD (between))
• TOWN WALL (POST MEDIEVAL - 1540 AD to 1900 AD (between))

Associated Events

• Union Street (Ref: WCM100199)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100507)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100508)
• City Wall (Ref: WCM100952)
• 31 - 33 Friar Street - watching brief (Ref: WCM101104)

Full description

Length of medieval city wall, now demolished above ground level, at the rear of nos. 17-31 Friar Street. It incorporated a feature interpreted as a tower (WCM 96105, T1).

Excavated by Bennett in 1973 in two trenches (WCM 100507, 16/19, trench XIII and WCM 100508, 16/2, trench XIV). Towards the north end of this stretch (in WCM 100507), the wall was found in exceptionally good condition, with four plinth courses and six courses above giving a total height of 2m. To the south (WCM 100508) the wall survived to 2.5m with five plinth courses and six courses over. A 10-metre wide protruding section of wall face was identified as the base of a probable tower (T1: WCM 96105). A series of ten putlog holes, regularly spaced and at the same level represented joist-seatings inserted into the wall face to support a floored structure above the city ditch at this point. It was interpreted by the excavator as a possible Civil War breastwork (though could have been a later structure?) {1}.

This section of the city wall also formed part of the precinct wall of the Greyfriars (Franciscan) intramural precinct (WCM 96029). In the 18th century Valentine Green wrote that the friary was bounded to the east by the city wall where ‘the embrasures were stopped up, but were every where discernible’ within the wall {2}.

A clay and pebble layer excavated 30 metres to the south west of the Friars Gate by Courtney and Newman (1983, WCM 100199) was seen in a very restricted exposure but recognised by them as ‘similar to the matrix of a bank noted on the inside of the city wall elsewhere in Worcester’ (ie WCM 96140). The excavation itself did not contact the back of the city wall {3}.

According to Chris Ham (pers comm, 6/3/03), who developed a site to the rear of 27 Friar Street in the 1980s, the city wall remains were seen surviving close to the surface during works associated with and to the north of (ie closer to Union Street than) this development. {4}

Correspondence and drawings in the City Walls paper file (dated October 1975) refer to the removal of the stonework of this stretch down to and including plinth batter courses (and possibly more). This was in acknowledgement of the particular interest of this stretch of wall. The stonework was initially to be re-erected next to the boundary wall of 25 Friar Street, close to its original site. Subsequently it was decided that provision was to be made for the stones to be individually numbered and taken to the Commandery for storage. The file documents do not indicate whether this actually happened or what the subsequent fate of the stone was, though this was not the wall re-erected at the rear of the Commandery (currently - 2008 - in storage), as that is recorded as having been there in mid-20th century.

Wall continues to S as WCM 96103, and to N as Friars' Gate (WCM 96106). Ditch here is WCM 96135.

Sources and further reading

Related records

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