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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

• Greyfriars City Wall (Ref: WCM100098)
• 4 Charles Street (Ref: WCM100396)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100505)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100506)

Protected Status

• Scheduled Monument
• Listed Building

Full description

Length of medieval city wall, mostly standing (to varying heights), though demolished at either end in proximity to Union Street and Charles Street.

It forms the rear boundary to nos. 3-5 Friar Street, Greyfriars (WCM 96466), and Laslett’s Almshouses. The southern half of this section of the city wall also formed part of the precinct wall of the medieval 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 {1}.

The outer face of the wall was exposed by excavation in two trenches in the late 1960s and 70s. Bennett’s trench XI (WCM 100505, 16/17) sampled the ditch outside (WCM 96136) and found no berm separating it from the base of the wall. Trench XII (WCM 100506, 16/18) was first opened in 1967-9 and recorded the wall only. No features of particular note were seen. Substantial yard and warehouse walls were still founded on the medieval wall in the 1970s. In 1976-9 the northern half of this stretch (numbered as 16/63, 16/64) was repointed and the stone redressed; also the southern half (16/65) where dangerous brickwork was also removed {2}.

Most of this section of wall is now (2001) visible below current ground level along the sunken walkway built for its display during construction of the City Walls Road. From the south, it begins 4 metres north of Union Street with two visible courses of sandstone. Within the walkway there are four battered plinth courses and up to seven undisturbed-looking courses of sandstone above, though south of the Greyfriars/Laslett’s Almshouse boundary four courses above the plinth look re-set and are interspersed with brick and tile. North of the boundary, above the plinth, are multi-phase brick and sandstone rebuilds, the hand-made brick looking ?17th-18th-century and later. Three masonry courses are exposed below the plinth. The wall is demolished above ground from a point c.6 metres south of Charles Street.

The stretch of wall forming the east boundary of the Greyfriars property (WCM 96466) was recorded in 1996 (WCM 100098). The tile courses (see above) were noted but thought to be part of the primary single-phase construction. English garden wall bond was used for laying the brickwork at the wall’s northern and southern ends. In the 19th century the surveyed section of wall formed a side boundary to properties facing north onto Little Charles Street (outside the wall) and at least some of the brickwork belongs to these buildings {3}. Some stonework. probably of the inner face of the wall, is visible in the Greyfriars garden.

Cross-reference to: 96106, Friars’ Gate and bridge
Cross-reference to: 96108, city wall section
Cross-reference to: 96030, Greyfriars extramural precinct

Sources and further reading

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